


Forgive (Us Our Sins)

by hazel_3017



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Politics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22338916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazel_3017/pseuds/hazel_3017
Summary: It takes just over four years into their marriage before Sasuke mans up enough to ask Naruto out on a date. It’s a surprise to no one but Sasuke, probably, that Naruto says yes.(Or, in which Sasuke just really wants to date his husband in peace, but someone is out kill Naruto, so now he's gotta kick some ass.)
Relationships: Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 33
Kudos: 207





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weialala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weialala/gifts).



> So this story is very much dedicated to Weialala, who is one of the sweetest people I know and is forever patient with me. I love you a lot.
> 
> For those of you who are familiar with W's work, you'll be seeing a lot of similarities in this, I think, which have been made with the greatest of love and admiration (and also because overpowered, himbo Sasuke is our favourite Sasuke). I'd say this is sort of an AU of her AU.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!
> 
> **Disclaimer! This is a work of fiction. I do not own Naruto.**

It takes just over four years into their marriage before Sasuke mans up enough to ask Naruto out on a date. It’s a surprise to no one but Sasuke, probably, that Naruto says yes.

In fact, Sasuke was fairly certain Naruto would laugh his ass off at the very idea of it. So sure that he’d already convinced himself there was no point in setting up a plan for what he’d even do in the incredibly unlikely event that Naruto would say yes. 

But then, “Okay,” Naruto says, against all odds and calm as you please. He puts Sasuke’s dinner down in front of him as if this is just another normal day in the Uzumaki-Uchiha household. As if Sasuke asks Naruto out all the time, like a standing weekly date where they get someone to babysit Shisui for a few hours—or maybe the whole night if Sasuke is lucky, so that he gets to see Naruto all dolled up, gets to bring him back home to an empty house and take him to bed, pull off Naruto’s fine, expensive clothes and, and, _and_ maybe this fantasy is getting a little away from Sasuke, here. 

“Wow me with your wooing,” Naruto continues lightly, dares him really; his blue eyes flashes, bright and lovely, alight with something Sasuke can’t even name—and Sasuke is excellent at reading body language, spent _years_ training to become a master at it, except Naruto is a vault most days, locked up tight and impenetrable, a fortress onto himself. Usually, Sasuke has no chance of figuring out what the hell is going through Naruto’s head at any given time, not like when they were children and all Sasuke had to do was smirk a certain way and Naruto would be off and running. 

Not these days, though. These days, Sasuke smirks (still a certain way) and Naruto rolls his eyes so hard it must physically pain him.

Even so, Naruto hasn’t rejected him. Certainly doesn’t look as if he’d be opposed to go on a date with Sasuke. In fact, he looks kinda…pleased?

Which, _what_?

Across the table, Shisui sends his father a surreptitious two thumbs up, grinning like the ecstatic five-year-old he is, and Naruto lifts one fine brow expectantly, as if to say, _Well, Uchiha?_

It is such an obviously telegraphed thought that Naruto may as well have spoken the words aloud. Sasuke can’t help but take it as the challenge it is meant to be.

Oh, it is _on._

Which is how Sasuke, the least romantic man in all of Konoha _for sure_ , has to plan a date with the love of his life—who, in fact, does not realise he even _is_ the love of Sasuke's life, because Naruto, the self sacrificing idiot, married the traitor Uchiha Sasuke to keep him from being executed, to keep Sasuke’s _son_ from being executed—and Shisui was just a baby back then, a true innocent in a world ravaged by war. And although the babe had nothing to do with the Uchiha Clan’s many and colossal fuck ups, he was still an _Uchiha_ , still a _threat_ —and there is so much to unpack there that most days, Sasuke doesn’t even bother to try.

So, yeah. A date.

“What do people even do on dates? Is there a step by step guide somewhere? Would a night out hunting missing nin count as a good date?”

It’s probably a testament to how pathetic he looks that Sakura doesn’t immediately throw Sasuke out on his ass. Which she should, because the hospital usually frowns on people who aren’t medical professionals hanging around in the break room at the pediatrics department.

But Sakura knows better than to get rid of him when so many of the nurses on rotation consider him their eye candy, and Sasuke has no problem being objectified for an hour or two if it means he gets some much-needed advice.

He even flexes a bit unnecessarily, smirking when it pulls his shirt tight across his shoulders and he hears quiet giggles behind him.

“First of all, your _husband_ , the first in line to become Hokage,” Sakura says very pointedly, glaring at a pretty blond who’s been staring at Sasuke’s broad figure since he first entered the room—he must be fresh out of school or new to the department; Sasuke doesn’t recognise him from the other nurses that usually hang around when he visits—“Is not to be invited out on a night hunting missing nin as a _date_. Under no circumstances, Uchiha, do you understand me?”

Sasuke rolls his eyes but nods along dutifully. It wasn’t as if he was actually planning on going hunting as part of his date with Naruto. Even if they would kick ass at it—even if Sasuke could actually use Naruto’s particular skills in hunting down that slimy fucker from Iwagakure that was somehow _still_ evading Sasuke’s team and— 

“Hey, Colonel!” Sakura barks at him, and follows it up with a strong punch to his arm. “No hunting missing nin for your date! This is not a bring your husband to work situation.” She hits him once more for good measure.

Sasuke feels his eyes water, but doesn’t wince. It’s a near thing; a lesser man would have sobbed at the force of Sakura’s hits, but Sasuke has more or less gotten used to it through sheer exposure and a shit ton of ‘affectionate rough housing', i.e Sakura beating the crap out of Sasuke in training when they were still on Team 7. More often than not, Naruto would be egging them on from the sidelines while Kakashi despaired, often and loudly, of ever meeting three snotty little genin.

Sasuke can’t believe he looks back at that time fondly. 

“I wasn’t—”

“You were,” Sakura says. “Don’t even front.” She flicks a lock of pink hair away from her eyes, huffing in annoyance when it does little more than settle stubbornly over her forehead again. “Anyway, Naruto deserves romance, okay? He deserves a nice restaurant and you showing up on time and _clean_ ,” she says, with more emphasis on the word ‘clean’ than Sasuke thinks is warranted. 

That is until he sees where Sakura is looking, her brows arched with disdain at a large tear in Sasuke’s shirt. It’s Kiba’s doing, the result of a rare moment where Sasuke’s guard had been lowered enough that Kiba had managed to get a little too close at practice earlier, and yeah, Sasuke maybe should have cleaned up the dried blood before he went to visit Sakura in the children’s wing of the hospital.

Sasuke holds back a sigh. That’s undoubtedly getting back to Naruto, and even worse, _Kakashi_.

“Right, okay. Yeah. A restaurant. Show up on time, be clean. I think I can handle that.” Definitely Sasuke can handle that. Probably. Maybe?

Sakura gives him a pitying look as if to say, _Can you, really?_ “A _nice_ restaurant, okay? Not just Ichiraku Ramen. And for Kami’s sake, Sasuke, try not to talk about work. It’s a date, not a work conference.”

“You should try the new place that just opened up in Sand Land,” one of the nurses suggests, not even bothering to pretend she hasn’t been listening in. Oka Cheiko is her name. Sasuke recognises her easily, not least of all because she’s so tall for a woman, taller than even Sasuke’s 6’4. She’s a good nurse, Sasuke knows, because she’d been on Shisui’s team of medical professionals when he got admitted a few years ago; she was one of the few people Sakura and Tsunade had trusted to go near the boy, which is how Sasuke knows she is very, very good at her job.

“Oh yeah!” one of the other nurses chimes in, the blond one, the one who’s been checking him out unapologetically. “It’s supposed to be really good traditional Suna-style food, and _really_ expensive. It’s called Sabaku, I think.”

_Sabaku_. Desert.

A fitting, if not predictable name for a restaurant run by immigrants from Sunagakure. Or so Sasuke would assume. The district that makes up what is known as Sand Land is located a few minutes away from the city centre proper. It consists mostly of refugees from the Land of Wind. Suna, in particular, had taken heavy damages in the Fourth Great War, and Konoha, on Naruto’s insistence, had opened her gates to those who needed it, from all the Lands of the Continent.

Never, in all of Konoha’s history, has there been such a huge influx of refugees and immigrants as there has been since the Fourth Great War. Never before has Konoha been as diverse and vibrant as it is now.

Sasuke, personally, is a fan. But not everyone shares his enthusiasm for diversity and tolerance; he’s lost count of how many times Naruto has come storming home after a day at the Senate, arguing with ignorant Nationalists that want to ‘Make Konoha Great Again’.

“A thinly veiled excuse for ignorant xenophobic bullshit,” Naruto would snarl furiously once Shisui was out of earshot. “An echo chamber of racism and bigotry, Sasuke, and they don’t even have the balls to say it outright. _They_ should get the hell out of Konoha if they’re so unhappy here.” And Sasuke would nod in serious agreement, because that was always only the start of Naruto’s tangent and he doesn’t know how to give Naruto what he needs besides Sasuke’s silent, unwavering support.

Sasuke doesn’t spend much time in Sand Land, but Naruto does. He makes a point of visiting the shops and talking with the people, as he does with all the immigrant districts— _Iwa Town, Little Oto, Stone Village,_ and the _Water District_ —and not least of all because Sand Land is known for its cuisine and Naruto is a glutton when it comes to food.

(Not even Sasuke can pack away as much food in one setting as Naruto can, and Sasuke is _always_ hungry from burning so much chakra.)

This Sabaku place would be _perfect_.

**

“So,” Kakashi drawls slowly. “Sakura tells me you’re taking Naruto out on a date. At Sabaku, no less. Pretty swanky. It’s gonna cost you a pretty sum.”

He’s slouched against the western wall of the Hokage Tower, looking for all the world as if he doesn’t have a long list of things on his agenda today. His Hokage hat is bunched up carelessly in one hand, and a cigarette rests between his lips as he shifts his eyes about furtively, looking for signs of Naruto or Sakura. He’s been trying to quit smoking for two years now, and mostly he keeps to it, but sometimes he needs, “A goddamn break, Uchiha. Don’t think I won’t eviscerate you if you tell on me.” Which is no small threat, and Sasuke is a soldier first, a fighter, but he knows better than to lie to his husband.

He took vows.

Sasuke just hopes Naruto won’t smell the smoke on him; if he asks, Sasuke will be forced to tell the truth, and then Kakashi will kick his ass. _Again_. It’s a vicious cycle.

“Do you even have a suit, Uchiha? You realise you’re gonna need a suit, right? Can’t show up in your dress blues.”

“Yes, I have a suit,” Sasuke grunts. Ino had made sure of that once Sakura had run her mouth at one of their weekly brunches. Then Ino had told Hinata, who had told Neji, who had made sure Sasuke had gotten a highly coveted table at Sabaku because apparently— _apparently_ —the normal waiting time for Sabaku was four fucking months and Neji had no faith at all that Sasuke could manage even the basic task of getting a reservation—and isn’t it just Sasuke’s luck that the entirety of Konoha is as invested in this date as he is?

And he gets it, he does. He’s been hopelessly in love with Naruto for years, and it’s not as if everyone and their fucking grandmothers don’t know this—people in the most northern tribes of North Country know this one simple fact. He gets that their friends are just excited for him, are trying to help, because Sasuke on a good day is a train wreck when it comes to most things besides fighting and being a soldier. But even so, Sasuke would really rather go about this his own way, in his own time. He knows Naruto, knows the fragile heart he hides behind wide, generous smiles and intelligent, blue, blue eyes. 

Naruto loves, deeply and freely. He loves his family, his friends, his people, his country. He loves the damn fox that is still stuck inside of him after all these years.

Sasuke knows this like he knows that water is wet and grass is green. He also knows that Naruto never, _ever_ , expects any of that love to be returned.

That is the damage he still carries with him from his childhood, the dark parts, the years he won’t talk about to anyone.

It’s made Naruto wary of love, wary of the idea that anyone could love him unconditionally. That anyone would want to.

It’s why he’s denied Kakashi’s request of adopting him four times. Even as that broke both their hearts, even as Naruto sometimes slips up and calls Kakashi, “ _Dad.”_

Sasuke and Naruto are already married, but they don’t have a _marriage_ , not in the way that matters. Not in the way Sasuke has been dreaming of since he was six years old and Naruto smiled at him for the first time ever.

Sasuke doesn’t really believe in love at first sight, but six-year-old him had looked at a smiling, tiny blond kid and been pretty sure that that was his future husband right there; twenty-four-year-old him thinks his six-year-old self is a genius. So, yeah. He’ll be fucking pissed if any of his friends go overboard and scares Naruto into running.

It’ll be just Sasuke’s luck if Naruto decides that now would be the perfect time to go touring the Continent in the name of international diplomacy.

Sasuke is just barely holding back a scowl at the thought of Gaara’s smug face and his fingers encircling Naruto’s delicate wrist in a traditional Land of Wind greeting. Gaara would just love that, Sasuke bets, Naruto all to himself while Sasuke is stuck back in Konoha with their son. 

Sasuke clenches his jaw, biting down on the slow boiling fury he can feel building in the pit of his stomach; he doesn’t need to hear Kakashi bark at him to control his _fucking emotions, Uchiha. You’re slipping. Anyone within a ten-mile radius can tell you’re fucking pissed off._ He’s better than that now. A colonel in the greatest army on the Continent. _Kakashi’s_ colonel, his best. Kakashi shouldn’t have to be reminding him of basic lessons; he’s not his student anymore. He doesn’t need him to explain that a boy his husband had a relationship with years ago is in no way a threat against their marriage—even if it is sham marriage. For now, anyway. 

As if reading his mind, Kakashi cuffs him on the back of his head, gentle. So achingly gentle. “We’re always learning, yeah? Sometimes, we even need reminding of the lessons we’ve already learnt.”

Sasuke looks away and says nothing, because the history they share between them is long and complicated; years ago, Kakashi would never have treated him with such care. Sasuke wasn’t deserving of it then, and he barely is now.

Kakashi sighs, but keeps his silence, and Sasuke does scowl this time; that was a disappointed sigh.

“This suit of yours, is it tailored? Naruto will appreciate that.”

And that…Sasuke sneaks a look at Kakashi at that, because that almost sounded like sound advice. Kakashi had been violently against his marriage to Naruto in the beginning, because marrying Sasuke was a life sentence—Naruto tied himself to the Uchihas forever when he agreed to it, bonded his name and reputation in a way that could never be broken lest someone take up the chant of death to all Uchihas everywhere again. Kakashi respects Sasuke, is fond of him in his way and has invested considerable time and effort into shaping Sasuke into the man and soldier he is today, but.

_But_.

Naruto is Kakashi’s little boy. He may not have sired him, may not share a legal or familial bond by blood, but for all intents and purposes, Kakashi considers Naruto his son. And only the best is good enough for Kakashi’s son.

Sasuke…Sasuke is not it. 

It’s something they’ve never talked about, but they both know it.

Sasuke clears his throat uncomfortably. “Yeah. Ino, she, uh. Yeah. It’s fitted.” He scuffs his foot awkwardly before catching himself, straightening to his full height and mentions nothing at all of how Ino, the tailor, and three of the tailor’s assistants had stared at him in awe at the finished product.

“Kami wept,” one of the assistants had breathed out reverently, and Ino had muttered something about none of _her_ dates ever looking like that and Naruto better be thankful she was no longer set on becoming Mrs. Uchiha. Sasuke had taken that to mean that he had looked good. _Really_ good _._ There may have been preening involved.

Kakashi hums. He straightens from his slouch, mimicking Sasuke, and inhales deeply from his cigarette, letting it burn all the way down to the filter before flicking it to the ground. “Come on, Uchiha.” He steps on the glowing butt with the toe of his sandal, grinding it into the ground, and they both know if Shisui had caught him, he would have gotten an earful about littering; Shisui has been learning about environmental policies at school this year. He’s all about clean, healthy living. 

Kakashi clamps a firm hand down on Sasuke’s shoulder; “Don’t tell the kid, yeah.” He pauses, cuts a grimace, and then amends, “Either of them.”

And Sasuke nods agreeably, because yeah, Shisui and Naruto separately are loud; Shisui and Naruto together is a thunderstorm.

He wonders if the other Kages of the Continent would be interested to know that all it takes to cow the great Hatake Kakashi into submission is a tiny five-year-old and a cheery blond who weighs maybe 150 pounds soaking wet—for all that Naruto is a force of nature, even without the fox. 

Especially without the fox, because Sasuke, better than anyone, knows how very devastating Naruto’s smile and blue, blue eyes can be.

**

Sasuke goes to pick up Shisui at school later that day, and carefully keeps his face blank when he’s told that Naruto has already picked him up, bringing him home earlier in the afternoon while Sasuke and his team were out on a mission; a quick grab and go.

“Naruto said he’d leave a message at the COC,” Sakuma-sensei explains gently. As the principal of the civilian academy Shisui attends, Sakuma Iwao comes across as an unassuming man at first glance, but Sasuke has seen him talk Naruto and the whole of the PTA into submission without breaking a sweat, and knows there is more to the man than what first appears. Anyone who can go up against the PTA and come back unscathed at the other side of it is a seasoned soldier in Sasuke’s eyes. “It was a fever, mild, but high enough to be a concern considering Shisui’s history. I thought it best to send him home early.”

Sasuke clenches his right fist tight, blunt nails digging into the palm of his hand. It is the only sign that he’s bothered by the news. “Yeah. I had one of my lieutenants report back in after delivering our package. I knew I was running late, so I came straight here. Never got the message.”

Sakuma nods his understanding and places a comforting hand on his arm. “Go home, Uchiha-san. Your family is waiting for you.”

Sasuke barely gives him a cursory nod before he’s gone in a flash of _Shunshin._ There’s maybe a handful of people in the world that can keep up with Sasuke using this particular technique, and even fewer who can match his chakra reserves and the amount of juice he puts into the jutsu to boost his speed. It takes him less than a minute to travel from the academy before he comes to a rest outside the gates of the Uchiha compound.

He halts in front of the large gates, taking a second to place his hand on the large Uchiha symbol etched into the heavy metal. He breathes in deeply, closing his eyes and grounding himself in the feel of Naruto’s chakra signature as he feels for the active wards around the perimeter; the jutsu defending their home is holding strong. No one will breach the compound walls without a seriously nasty shock and both Sasuke and Naruto being alerted to it.

It’s been a couple of years now since there’s been a kidnapping or an assassination attempt, but Sasuke would rather go through the trouble of keeping the wards in place than losing another family.

“Hey.”

Sasuke’s eyes snap open to see Naruto before him, head tilted an inch to the side as he offers up a small smile. 

Sasuke blinks twice in surprise. He hadn’t even heard Naruto’s footsteps approaching. He takes a moment to observe him, content in the knowledge that Naruto will let him. It's as if he's staring through a looking glass, seeing just an image or a memory of someone, but not actually the real thing. Like something dead. Something without chakra.

Sasuke scowls openly and mentally curses the fox. “Tell him to stop,” he demands, because it feels unnatural and it takes a truly powerful and ancient creature to entirely mask someone’s chakra; Naruto can’t do it alone, but the fox is ever obliging.

The small smile grows, turning mischievous, and half a second later, Naruto’s chakra blooms into being. Sasuke feels himself unwind automatically.

“Sorry,” Naruto lies outrageously. “Didn’t mean to startle you.” And that part is probably half true, but he was definitely out to prank him. 

Sasuke relaxes a fraction more at that. It must mean Shisui is doing well.

“The boy sleeping?”

Naruto nods. “Yeah,” he says, and his smile gentles now. “The fever went down pretty easy this time, but he was exhausted. He fell asleep in our bed. You don’t mind, do you?”

Sasuke holds back a sigh. He doesn’t mind, truly, because it’s not as if he and Naruto ever use their big bed for anything other than sleeping, but it does mean that he’s going to have to protect himself from more than just Naruto’s errant limbs tonight. “Of course not. You left the boy alone?” he asks, because that’s not like Naruto, especially after a health scare, no matter how minor. When it comes to their son, Naruto is the very definition of a helicopter parent; even Shisui, who _adores_ Naruto, who thinks the sun rises and sets with Naruto, admits it can be a little much sometimes.

“I left a clone,” Naruto says easily, and shrugs a slim shoulder. 

Sasuke’s eyes track the movement, and he can feel the slight burn of chakra as his Mangekyou whorls to life, immortalising the sight into his mind, of what he now recognises as _his_ sweater slipping off of Naruto’s shoulder, showing the tan skin of his exposed collarbone below and Sasuke feels the words crawling up his throat before he chokes them back down again.

The words he never says but thinks everyday:

_You’re so beautiful. I’ve been in love with you forever._

If Sasuke wasn’t such a gods-damned coward, if he wasn’t so terrified that Naruto would spook, he’d whisper those words in Naruto’s ear every chance he got.

“Sasuke?” Naruto calls, and Sasuke lifts his gaze, red meeting blue. He narrows his eyes.

“You left a clone?” he echoes, lilts his voice just enough to make it a question.

Naruto’s mischievous smile is back. “Did I?” he laughs, and Sasuke curses before punching through the rails of the gate, fist striking Naruto’s nose straight on. The clone dispels and Sasuke knows it’s his imagination, but he swears he can hear Naruto’s smug laugh carrying in the wind all the way from the mansion to the gates a good two hundred yards away.

Goddamn clones. It’s the seventh time this month they’ve gotten the better of him.

_Sloppy, Uchiha_ , he scolds himself.

A second later, he feels Naruto’s chakra unfurl, his signature signalling him somewhere inside the mansion; cuddling with Shisui in bed, most likely. Now that Sasuke is focusing, he can tell it’s the real Naruto.

With another burst of Shunshin, Sasuke is inside the bedroom.

“I felt that, you know,” Naruto says immediately, but his eyes are lit up with amusement from where he’s curled around Shisui on the bed, and the phantom pain of the punch to the nose must have faded even before Sasuke made it inside.

“That’s what you get for pranking unsuspecting innocents.”

Naruto laughs lowly at that, careful not to jostle the sleeping boy next to him even as nothing short of an actual explosion will wake him up once Shisui is asleep. “Unsuspecting you may have been; innocent, you are not,” Naruto says, and there is little Sasuke can do but agree with that.

It’s been a long time since he was anything even resembling innocent.

“Come on, Uchiha. Go get changed and then join us. We’re napping for at least another hour. And then you can make us dinner.”

Sasuke rolls his eyes. “You say that as if you think me making dinner will be anything but frozen pizza or takeaway,” he says, and Naruto chuckles at him quietly as Sasuke heads into their en-suite bathroom to change out of his uniform. He quickly untangles the thick Northern braid spilling down his back before he jumps into the shower for a quick rinse, because he can do _clean,_ _gods-dammit_ , _Sakura._ He pulls on a comfortable pair of sweats once he’s done and towelled himself dry.

He pads barefoot and bare-chested back into the bedroom, halting for a second to see that Naruto is already asleep. Shisui is still passed out to the world, head tucked in under Naruto’s chin, and Sasuke may no longer be an innocent, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still have innocence in his life.

_Everything_ , he swears to himself as he settles behind Naruto on the bed before lifting one arm to cover his husband and child, holding them both close. _Everything I have ever done was worth it, to have this._

And the Old Gods have mercy on anyone who tries to take it away from him, because Sasuke will not.

He will scorch the earth and salt the ground in his rage. 

And as he has done before—as he would do again—he will rise.

From the ashes.

**

“Daddy, wake up! Chichiue says dinner is ready. Come _on_. I’m hungry, Daddy!”

Sasuke grunts and buries his face in the pillow. His internal clock tells him he’s slept for two hours or so already. He breathes in spices and wildflowers, the scent still strong enough on the pillow that Naruto couldn’t have gotten up much more than an hour ago.

“ _Daddy_ ,” Shisui whines, and paws at Sasuke’s broad back with his tiny hands. It used to scare Sasuke how very small his son was. It didn’t make sense for someone who was his whole world to be so very small.

He grins when he feels Shisui’s tiny, little fingers push Sasuke’s hair aside to trace the Uchiha fan tattooed between his shoulder blades, touch gentle as he feels along the ink. The fingers pull back for a moment, and then the sheets rustles as Shisui climbs his way onto the bed, crawling over him before planting his butt on Sasuke’s back to reach the words inked into the skin above the fan.

The Uchiha Clan words:

_From the Ashes._

“Chichiue says I can’t get a tattoo until I’m eighteen, and maybe not even then. But I don’t think that’s fair, ‘cause Chichiue got a tattoo when he was just a baby, and you got one when you were nine. I think I should be able to get one now. I’m five!” Shisui says importantly. “Almost _six_.”

Sasuke chuckles warmly at that. “You do, huh? And what tattoos have you been thinking you should be getting now that you’re five? Oh, excuse me, almost six.” He reaches back with one hand, gently pushing Shisui off his back and to the side of the bed so he can turn to look at the kid.

His boy is grinning ear to ear, mouth stretched wide and eyes squeezed nearly shut with happiness. Sasuke’s heart aches to see how much he resembles Naruto like that.

Shisui was born to a woman of the Northern tribes, a brief affair Sasuke carried out during the Great War. There is very little of her in him, and physically, Shisui is the carbon copy of Sasuke, from his hair to his eyes and the shape of his face. An Uchiha through and through. Only his nose and thick brows speak to his Northern heritage.

His mannerisms, though, are all Naruto. 

“An Uchiha fan, like you, Daddy. Right here,” Shisui says, and presses one hand over his heart. “And the Uzumaki symbol, to honour Chichiue. Here.” He slides his hand down from his heart to his stomach, to where the Uzumaki Clan symbol begins the design of the Nine-Tail’s seal mark on Naruto’s stomach.

It makes Sasuke frown to think of it. He drags a hand over his jaw, scratching at the scruff there; he wonders if he should shave before he heads downstairs for dinner or if Naruto prefers it that way.

First thing first, though.

“Okay, kiddo. Listen up, ‘cause this is important.” He hides a smile to see Shisui straighten up immediately, listening intently to what Sasuke has to say. “Your chichiue did get a tattoo when he was a baby, but he had no choice in it, and the circumstances were bad, you understand?”

Shisui nods seriously. “Because that’s when Grandma Kushina and Grandpa Minato died?”

“That’s right. And Chichiue is friends with the fox now, but for a long time they weren’t, and Chichiue’s tattoo wasn’t something he wanted, okay?”

“Kuruma is nice, though, Daddy. He tells the best stories. He’s a _thousand_ years old,” Shisui goes on, as if that number is so large he can’t even comprehend it.

Frankly, Sasuke struggles with the same sometimes.

“Sure,” Sasuke drawls. “Kuruma is… _nice_.” He isn’t. The fox loves Naruto and tolerates Shisui, and that is the extent of his good will.

Everyone else is dirt beneath his massive paws.

“My point is, Chichiue didn’t choose to get a tattoo, and I was just a dumb kid without parental supervision when I got my first. I almost ended up in the hospital because it got infected. So. If your chichiue says no tattoos until you’re eighteen, then we’re gonna listen to him, okay?”

Shisui’s bright eyes dim a bit, and he sighs the sigh of the truly long-suffering, but he nods his agreement easily enough. “Okay,” he says, allowing himself a small grin when Sasuke ruffles his hair affectionately. 

“Come on, little man. Let’s go see what’s for dinner.”

**

“Lee offered to have Shisui for a sleepover this weekend,” Naruto says as he goes about getting ready for bed that night. “Says he and Kei could use the practice. They’re thinking about it, you know. About starting a family.”

Sasuke lifts his brows from where he’s stretched out on the bed, Shisui already passed out against his chest as Sasuke watches Naruto go through his skin regime in front of the vanity. It’s mesmerising. Sasuke could watch Naruto like this forever. “We are not leaving our son with _Rock Lee._ I don’t care how much Kei makes up for it. It’s _Lee_.”

“Don’t be mean,” Naruto scolds, lifting his gaze so he can meet Sasuke’s eyes through the mirror, but Sasuke can see the twitch of his mouth that means he’s amused, and doesn’t feel an ounce of guilt.

“Rock Lee, Naruto,” Sasuke says. “The same man who challenged you to a race in the Water District just a couple of weeks ago, and when you refused, _raced himself_.”

Naruto winces. “Yes. That, uh, that was unfortunate.”

Unfortunate in the sense that the Water District is a maze of street vendors and Lee can be a human hurricane with very little coordination—no less than seven stalls had been damaged that day.

“Kei spent three hours talking the Nakasone family from pressing charges,” Sasuke reminds him. “She was almost banished from her own district through sheer association alone.”

“Yes, well.” Naruto puts away the last of his expensive face creams and picks up his ridiculous sleeping cap, securing it over his head before making his way to the bed and climbing underneath the covers. 

It’s just as well, because if Sasuke can focus on the stupid cap instead of the flimsy material of Naruto’s sleep shirt, then Sasuke’s blood is liable to stay north of his waist.

The last thing he needs is getting an inappropriate boner while their kid sleeps between them.

“Anyway, I told Lee we’d already made plans; Sakura said she wanted to spend some time with him. She’s been promising Shisui for ages that they can have a camp-out in her living room.”

Sasuke hums at that, stroking a gentle hand down Shisui’s back. “He’d like that.”

“Yes,” Naruto agrees, and the look on his face as he watches Sasuke and Shisui is so soft, Sasuke kind of wants to drown in it.

He clears his throat awkwardly, waits until Naruto turns to shut off the night light and the room is plunged into darkness before he says, “So, this Saturday, you’re still, I mean. The date. Sabaku.” He fumbles his words, not sure how to ask if Naruto is still interested in going out on a date with him. It’s been a week since he first manned up and gathered the courage to ask him out, and Sasuke has managed to procure a tailored suit and a dinner reservation at a booked out restaurant in that time.

In other words, more than enough time for Naruto to change his mind.

But Naruto only laughs at him. “Yes, Sasuke,” he says quietly in the dark, “I would still like to go on our date. I’d hardly back out now. Not when I had to cash in a favour just to get our reservation in the first place.”

Sasuke stills.

Naruto had done what now?

He opens his mouth, but he can’t bring himself to ask. He feels his gut clenching, tendrils of humiliation shooting up from the bottom of his stomach. He was supposed to plan this date, and he’s already made concessions for Sakura, for Ino, and for what he thought was Neji’s influence, but all he’s doing is proving how utterly terrible he is at this.

“I’m sorry, I should have—”

“No, don’t,” Naruto says. "Don't apologise."

Sasuke hears him turning, and can’t help the way he stiffens briefly when he feels Naruto’s hand find his in the dark. Naruto laces their fingers together; his fingers are so small against Sasuke’s thick ones where they rest over Shisui’s back.

“I didn’t mind,” Naruto continues. “Sabaku was a good choice, and we’d had to wait for our anniversary again if we’d want a table without pulling strings. I don’t mind, Sasuke. I’m, I’m—”

“What?” Sasuke urges. “You’re what?”

“I’m excited,” Naruto says, and the two-word confession falls loud and heavy between them, like something Sasuke thought he’d never get—because Naruto loves him in the way that best friends love each other, loved him enough to marry him to save his and Shisui’s lives, but that also meant giving up Gaara and the thing the two of them were building between them back then.

Gaara had planned on giving him a ring, Sasuke knows.

Sasuke has always thought that Naruto resented him for that. Gaara does, most certainly, but if Naruto ever did—if he still does—he’s never once let Sasuke catch wind of it.

“Yeah?” Sasuke breathes out, and feels his heart flutter with something small and hopeful. “Me too.”

And the way Sasuke can _hear_ Naruto’s smile as he says, “Good night, husband,” is absolutely worth the shit Sasuke will get from his subordinates when he confronts Neji about his secrecy the next day.

Which Sasuke wastes absolutely no time in doing.

“Hyuga,” he roars as he strides into the Command Operating Centre to look for his wayward 2IC. He finds him standing next to his uncle by the large monitors in the control hub of the COC, overlooking an ongoing op. Things look to be well in hand, communications gone temporarily quiet, so Sasuke says, “You fucking son of a goat whore. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t rip you a new one where you stand.”

Neji blinks at him, and by his side, Hiashi pinches the bridge of his nose as if fighting off a particularly painful headache. It’s the usual expression he wears around Sasuke.

Before either men can answer, there’s a shout from behind him.

“Oi, Colonel. You bellowed?”

Sasuke turns his head to see his assassination expert planted on top of one of the desks in corner of the room, feet folded underneath her and mouth working around the lollipop between her lips. From the corner of his eye, Sasuke catches Hiashi looking especially pained.

“Don't worry, Hanabi. I wasn't talking about you, but your waste of space cousin,” Sasuke informs her, sharing a feral grin with her when he sees Neji rolling his eyes. “He’s been conspiring with my husband behind my back.”

Neji sighs. “I was not conspiring against you. I simply told you I knew someone who could get you the reservation you needed. As it so happens, that person was Naruto. You got what you wanted, did you not?”

It’s been years since Sasuke first started tentatively looking at Neji as a friend, but even now, as brothers in arms and Neji his second in command, Sasuke still feels the urge to punch him in his smug, stupid face from time to time.

“I still think I should kick your ass.”

Neji rolls his eyes again, but Hanabi snickers as she jumps off the desk and walks over to join Sasuke. “Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying Naruto got you the table at Sabaku? Weren’t you supposed to ‘woo’ him, Colonel? Take care of everything yourself? You’ve been bragging about it for a week. That’s pathetic, Colonel, real weak.”

Sasuke scowls and swipes at her, but Hanabi ducks easily.

“Were we expecting anything else from the colonel?” a voice cuts in neatly from the entrance. It's Suigetsu, of course, and Sasuke closes his eyes, wondering how long he’s been there because Suigetsu's favourite pastime is mocking Sasuke and Suigetsu will never, ever let him forget this. “This is the same man who once took not one, not two, but _three_ girls from Kumogakure to bed and then went to battle with their people the next morning. He’s a train wreck at these things.”

Which is true, although in Sasuke’s defence, he hadn’t realised the girls were Kumo nin until the morning after and the shuriken had started flying.

He’d been fifteen and waging war for Orochimaru, nearly two years into a campaign where he was forcibly expanding the borders of Oto into Yu and then Shimo, gaining ground closer to Kumo everyday—the idea of a _foursome_ with a trio of truly beautiful girls were enough to sate his growing blood lust and make him forget all the battle horror for a few, precious hours. 

(Sasuke has worked very hard to make sure that Naruto never, _ever_ finds out about that—or most of his other dalliances from before their marriage.)

“Not really,” Hanabi agrees, and Sasuke looks skywards for patience; his subordinates are such little shits sometimes. “I agree with Uchiha, though," Hanabi goes on. "He should kick Neji’s ass; I so love watching my cousin eat dirt.”

“Hanabi!” Hiashi barks, a futile warning. His youngest daughter is as wild as his oldest is sweet. Strangely enough, the only person who can even half manage her is Sasuke. Probably why Hanabi is such a perfect fit to his team.

“Brat,” Sasuke says fondly, and when he reaches for her again, she doesn’t avoid him, but lets him settle his hand on her head and ruffle her hair as he would Shisui.

From his place by the monitors, Hiashi’s gaze burns heavy.

“All right then. Neji, I’ll have to kick your ass later. Naara mentioned he had news for us yesterday. We’re up and moving, to the clubhouse.”

His subordinates might be a bunch of little shits, but they follow his lead, always, and the second Sasuke loses his smirk and straightens to his full height—towering over everyone but Suigetsu—Neji and Hanabi snap to attention. Suigetsu is no difference.

There is no hesitation as Neji neatly steps away from his uncle with a quiet, “Sir,” and there is a palpable tension in the air, as if the staff who’s been quiet till now, content to take in the free drama taking place in their control hub, senses the thrill of their most elite team with a mission in the works.

They murmur among themselves as Sasuke stalks out of the hub, Neji, Suigetsu, then Hanabi falling into formation behind him, because this? 

_This_ is Uchiha Sasuke in his element. 

All enemies beware.

**

“You’re late,” is the first thing out of Kiba’s mouth as they enter the clubhouse, which is such a hypocritical statement that Sasuke doesn’t even bother to acknowledge it.

He takes a second to look around the room to make sure everyone is present and accounted for before he finds Shikamaru puffing on a cigarette up by the presentation board. “Tell me,” he demands.

“You’re not going to like it,” Shikamaru says frankly, and if it’s bad enough that he’s smoking inside while Moegi works her magic to absorb the smoke into tight little bullets she keeps guiding up through the ventilation system, Sasuke is fairly certain that he is going to do more than just not like it; he’s going to positively hate it.

“I never like anything you tell me. You only ever bring bad news.”

Shikamaru shrugs at this. “If only the world would stop fucking up so much, I’d bring you some good news once in a while.” He signals someone in the back, and a second later, the board springs to life.

Sasuke stares for a moment, and the bleats out such a dirty curse in one of the tribal dialects of the North that Jugo lets out an impressed breath beside him.

The picture that has been put up on the board is of Naruto.

“Oh, shit,” Kiba murmurs, but everyone else have gone deathly quiet.

Shikamaru puffs harder on the cigarette. “As you can see, we’ve had news concerning Naruto.” He gestures to the image on the board, and signals whoever has been put in charge of the projector again, because below the image of Naruto is suddenly a collage of the immigrant districts.

“As I’m sure you all know, Konoha’s been growing at an exponential rate since the Great War. We’re the biggest, most populated village in the Continent right now. By far. Part of this is because Konoha was never under heavy fire—Naruto and the fox made sure of that—but mostly it’s due to Konoha’s generous open border policies in recent years. I checked with Hinata yesterday, and she says we’re seeing as many as two dozen immigrant applications every week.”

Someone whistles at that, and Suigetsu says, “Damn. I didn’t realise there was still such an influx of people. Where are we even housing them?”

It is a legitimate question, not least of all because Konoha is only so big—and sooner or later, they’ll be forced to expand the borders beyond the wall and into the Redwoods. Then there is the fact that no one really knows how to best deal with it yet, because the phenomenon of immigration is still so new. For centuries, the peoples of the Continent had been nomadic, living in large clans and moving from one land to another when their settlements became inhabitable. This was the time before shinobi villages, when people lived and died with the honour of their clans; to leave their families—the clan lands—to seek a better life elsewhere was almost unthinkable.

Now, in certain parts of the Continent, to emigrate might be someone’s only hope for a decent life. An escape from poverty and destruction.

But the villages are still so very young, and few are equipped to deal with migration on a mass scale; when Sasuke was born, Konoha, as the first ever shinobi village, had only existed for fifty years. 

“It’s becoming an issue,” Shikamaru admits. “Ignoring that for the moment, though, on the whole, Konoha has greatly benefited from the population growth. Our economy has never been better, our education standard has reached a new high, and we’ve become the biggest and greatest military force on the Continent; the Tsuchikage and Raikage are positively green with envy. Which is another problem.” 

Shikamaru nods at where Jugo is seated next to Sasuke, and at his signal, Jugo stands to join him at the front of the room. “It’s common knowledge by now, especially in political circles both here and internationally, that Naruto is the driving force behind this change,” Jugo says. “This doesn’t happen without the policies he’s been pushing through the Centuriate Assembly and into the Senate.” 

He shares an uneasy look with Shikamaru, before he says, “Some people are starting to take offence. _Serious_ offence."

“On any given day, Naruto, as part of the Senate, as next in line to become Hokage, as a jinchuuriki, and even,” Shikamaru says, sparing a quick glance at Sasuke, “as the Uchiha Lord Consort, receives threats against his being. Everyday.” He eyes them for a quick moment to make sure everyone is following. “I’m not exaggerating when I say that not even the Kages receive as many threats. Most of these threats are benign in nature, disgruntled people who talk big on paper and don’t actually mean him any physical harm, but every single one is investigated. There’s a system in place that ranks their credibility and assess their threat level. It’s a complex and far more complicated system than I have time to explain right now, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just say it boils down to green, yellow, and red categories. Every threat that is sorted into green is eventually archived and discarded. Every threat that is deemed serious enough to warrant further investigation and constant moderation is sorted into yellow, but usually go nowhere. Red,” Shikamaru says deliberately, “are the threats we take, very, very seriously.”

“These are the threats where we up his protective detail,” Jugo speaks up. “Category red means we’re not just talking about it; it’s a given. Most times, it would warrant moving Naruto to a secure location as well.”

Sasuke nods his agreement, trying to moderate the rage simmering all the way down to the tips of his toes and fingers. “It’s happened maybe less than half a dozen times in his life,” he says. Most recently a year or so after their marriage. It’d been a disaster from start to finish, not least of all because it had been decided that Sasuke was not to be kept in the loop or even informed. He’d almost caused an international incident in trying to keep Naruto safe; he could tell something was going down and took matters into his own hands when no one would talk to him. His lack of information had gotten Naruto hurt, and it is the one thing that Sasuke will not ever forgive Kakashi for, because it had been his decision as Hokage to keep Sasuke out of it.

They’d agreed Sasuke would be kept in the loop from then on.

“This is a category red, then?” Tenten asks, looking concerned as she stares at the image of Naruto on the board.

“It is. And here’s the kicker: it’s an internal threat.”

“What do you mean, Naara?” Shino cuts in. “Are you saying that someone inside Konoha wants to get rid of Naruto?”

Shikamaru tugs at his goatee, looking grim. “I’m saying someone inside the Konoha _government_ wants to get rid of Naruto. By any means necessary.”

**

When Sasuke was first granted an Anbu team under his own command, Shikamaru had been his one demand. They could saddle him with whoever they chose, he’d claimed, and he would make it work, even with a snotty Hyuga for a 2IC, but Shikamaru was nonnegotiable. 

This had been after the Great War, after Naruto had married him to keep him safe and Sasuke had to prove again and again and _again_ that he could be trusted _—_ as a faithful citizen and loyal soldier, as a loving husband and father—but still, they were not so many years removed from the atrocities that Sasuke had committed in the name of Orochimaru’s war, or the overwhelming destructive power he’d displayed against Madara’s forces later on.

Frankly, the fact that they had given him command at all still baffles Sasuke. He supposes it was Kakashi’s doing in the end, or maybe Naruto’s influence.

(Sometimes, in the deepest parts of his heart where he buries all of his fears and doubts, Sasuke wonders if it wasn’t a _keep your enemy close_ situation.) 

Whatever the reason, Sasuke knew he _needed_ Shikamaru for it to work; there is no one else he trusts to get him the intel his team depends on.

No one but Shikamaru, who’d been crazy enough to accompany Sasuke on his solo mission north to gather allies against Madara’s forces, following Sasuke past the Land of Earth and into North Country—his mother’s country, in the dead of winter no less—just to expand his fucking spy-net. They’d picked up Jugo and Suigetsu along the way, but Sasuke will never forget Shikamaru’s company and support, or what it had meant to him then.

What it means to him now.

“Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?” Sasuke asks when Shikamaru settles down next to him on the grass lining the training field, joining Sasuke where he’s watching Karin and Kei working on their close-range duelling. “Kei!” he barks out when the women break apart for a moment. He waits until Kei’s gaze finds his, her Kiri-blue eyes, so dark they’re almost black, locking with his Mangekyou red.

“I know,” she calls out before he can point out the holes in her defence. “I’m dropping my left guard. I’m on it, Colonel.”

Like most Kiri nin, she specialises in sword fighting; she’d been neglecting her hand-to-hand combat until Sasuke got his hooks in her and recruited her to the team. A Konoha resident for three years by then, she’d been an excellent addition. A medic they sorely needed on a team filled with reckless idiots with the combined self-preservation of a baby koala; she and Karin got along famously.

She’s one of four team members with origins outside of Konoha, and as he does with Jugo, Suigetsu and Karin, Sasuke keeps a special eye on her. After all, he is so very intimately familiar with how difficult it can be to create bonds with strangers in a stranger land.

Now, having spent four years in Konoha and a year of that on Sasuke’s team, Kei is settled in nicely, happily joining the others whenever Naruto bullies Sasuke into hosting _another_ family barbecue. Like Hanabi, like Karin, and Tenten and Moegi, Sasuke thinks of Kei as his sister; despite being seven years older than him, Kei had confessed once that she looks at Sasuke like a pseudo big brother.

Sasuke loves her dearly, even if she did have the poor sense to go and fall in love with Rock Lee of all people.

“I was meeting with a source,” Shikamaru drawls. “Needed to confirm my intel. And you had Neji report to the COC after the grab and go yesterday, didn’t you? You never showed up. Didn’t want to call you back in if you were with Shisui and Naruto, and I didn’t have the complete intel anyway; Jugo was still over in interrogation.”

Jugo is one of the best interrogators Sasuke knows. He imagines he’d been patiently drawing out answers from whoever Ibiki had prepared for him over at the Torture and Interrogation division. The KPD Captain was generous like that.

“Yeah,” Sasuke says, the only concession he’ll make because Shikamaru’s logic is sound even if it pisses him off. “Rest of the team still back in the clubhouse?” 

The clubhouse is the name they’ve given the section of Anbu HQ that is dedicated entirely to Sasuke’s 12-person team. They have their own kitchen and changing rooms that are separate from the other Anbu teams. They even have a couple of training fields for their use only. It is more than a little extravagant, and Sasuke knows more than one Anbu who’s cried foul about nepotism and favouritism—even as it is common knowledge among them that Sasuke sunk parts of his own fortune into that section of the building to get the clubhouse up and running to his specifications. Very little official funding was spent on the project.

Although admittedly, Naruto asking Kakashi pretty please had probably gotten Sasuke all the licences he’d needed to keep everything on the up and up.

The legalities of adding a fire-proof and explosive-secure vault in the basement— _for_ _experiments, Colonel, nothing too extreme—_ had been a logistic nightmare.

“Yes,” Shikamaru says. “Neji is running point on Naruto’s protective detail. They’re working out the kinks now. You’ll be able to review it soon.”

“Good.”

Naruto won’t like it, especially not when he’s out and about, visiting the people of Konoha, taking special care to spend time amongst the people of the districts, and that’s the whole point isn’t it? Because some people are violently against Naruto’s work on immigrant integration and international politics, and Sasuke is so pissed off at the whole thing he has half a mind to wage war on the Nationalist party himself and be done with it.

Shikamaru hums next to him. “The Hokage will want a full report too. You know how he is about Naruto.”

Everyone knows Kakashi gets a little bit wild when it comes to Naruto’s safety, because Kakashi was the only War Commander who’d refused to bring his jinchuuriki to the front lines to battle Madara. Instead, he’d begged Naruto to stay behind in Konoha, to defend her gates and her people, and to “Stay _alive_ , Naruto. I have lost nearly every single one of my precious people; I _will_ _not_ lose you too,” and it is the only time Sasuke has seen Kakashi plead with anyone for anything.

“He’ll want to send Naruto away,” Sasuke muses, and finds he’s not quite opposed to that idea himself. He can already picture it. It’d be so easy, spiriting Shisui and Naruto out of the village at night under everyone’s noses. The obvious choice would be to head for Suna or the safe house in Kumo that was specifically built with the fox in mind. But Sasuke can think of another place. One where few would follow. “It’s the smart play with an in-house threat. Can’t get at him if he’s not here.”

Shikamaru hums again, thoughtful. “There’s not really anywhere you can send him, though. Nowhere he’d go without Shisui, and nowhere an assassin can’t get at him. Not even with Killer B’s protection in Kumo.”

“That’s not entirely true. There is one place,” Sasuke reminds him, and next to him, Shikamaru stiffens.

“Oi, Sasuke. You’re not really thinking about it, are you? Besides, you’d have to cross Iwa. No way to avoid it, and they’re as like to steal Naruto for themselves as they are to murder him. It’d be a shit show from start to finish.”

“Not if we travelled fast enough,” Sasuke counters immediately, because he likes this idea. It’s a solid plan, but unexpected. No one would think to predict it, not after the devastation of Madara. “Not if everyone thought we were heading for Suna. Get off a message to Gaara, and he’d help, I’m sure. Have him go through the motions of a big visit from a foreign dignitary. Everyone knows they’re close. It’s the perfect red herring.”

“It’s not—” Shikamaru begins. He pauses, shaking his head incredulously. “It’s no journey for a child,” he says instead; a concession.

Sasuke hides a grin. He’s going to need Shikamaru on his side if he wants to pull this off. “And Konoha won’t be a home for him if his chichiue is murdered.”

In front of them, Kei lets out a groan of pain as Karin’s fist strikes her, and Karin’s eyes gleam behind her glasses as she gets the upper hand.

“Fuck,” Shikamaru murmurs. “Fuck, that’s—” He breaks off, fingers moving into his vest pocket to fish out his pack of cigarettes. “You’re crazy. This _plan_ is crazy.”

Sasuke does grin then, Mangekyou spinning as he turns to look at Shikamaru. “But it’s going to work.”

“But it’s going to work,” Shikamaru agrees, which means that all Sasuke has to do now is convince Kakashi.

And Naruto. 

_Fuck_.

**

Sasuke gets Kakashi on board first, because he knows to divide and conquer, and then brings it up with Naruto that same night, and then once again when they’ve put Shisui to bed the next evening.

It’s Saturday, and if the gods didn’t so enjoy screwing with Sasuke’s life, he’d be dressed up in a fancy suit and eating at an overpriced restaurant right now, enjoying the food and sneaking obvious looks at Naruto just because he could.

Category red, however, means that Naruto is not allowed to dine in public. “Sorry, Sasuke,” Jugo had told him, clamping one large hand down on his shoulder in commiseration. 

Sasuke admits he’s bitter, but Naruto is downright pissed. More about the circumstances than the cancelled date, Sasuke thinks, which, he's not gonna lie, stings just a little bit.

“I don’t want to leave Konoha,” Naruto seethes as he storms around their bedroom, moving this and that; he’s a hurricane of restless energy, folding and refolding Sasuke’s clothes because his own are already pressed to perfection. “I don’t want Shisui to leave Konoha. It’s stupid. This whole thing is stupid.”

“It _is_ stupid,” Sasuke agrees from the edge of the bed, watching as Naruto almost vibrates out of his skin in fury. “But the threat is real, you know that, and leaving Konoha, just for a while,” he says when Naruto whirls on him and opens his mouth in protest, “is the smart thing to do. It’ll keep you safe. It will keep _Shisui_ safe.” And that’s a dirty, dirty trick, Sasuke knows, but Naruto had flat out refused him the first time he brought it up, because he is as obstinate as he is lovely.

“That’s not fair,” Naruto says quietly, and all the rage seems to leave him then. “You know I’d do anything to keep Shisui safe.”

“I do,” Sasuke agrees. He pushes up from the bed and reaches out with a hand, closing his fingers around Naruto’s wrist once he moves into range. He tugs, and Naruto falls against him, letting Sasuke wrap his bulk around him until he's got Naruto pressing up against his chest. “The best way to keep our son safe, to keep you safe, is to do this,” Sasuke says, and it’s not something he hasn’t said before, but Naruto is listening now.

“We’re safe _here_ ,” Naruto whispers, and Sasuke suppresses a shiver at the feel of his soft breath against Sasuke's bare skin. “You’ll protect us. We’ll protect _each other_. Like we also do.”

Sasuke closes his eyes, pained, but he will not yield in this. “Then let me protect you the best way I know how.”

Naruto breathes in shakily, but holds his silence. A second passes, another, until a full minute has gone by.

Finally, Sasuke feels Naruto nod against his chest. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s do it. Let’s travel to the Land of Cold.”


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasuke, though. Sasuke was _hers_. There was no army of nannies for Sasuke, no need to entrench him into the Uchiha way of life until it was all he knew. The exception, of course, being that he never forget his place in the Clan, and so Mikoto had been allowed to raise him as she saw fit—for the most part.
> 
> She got to teach him the history and the ways of _her_ people, the legends of the snow queens of the North and the warrior tribes living hard lives in a harder climate. Most people looked at the North as a barbaric, uncivilised land, but Sasuke knows the truth. Mikoto had made sure of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings! This chapter includes the following: implied rape, mention of child abuse, violence and injury related to war.**
> 
> Also! Someone in the comments was wondering about the Canon Divergence tag, and I promise the differences will become more clear as we go along, but for one thing, this obviously discards large parts of the 4th war and pretty much everything that happened after.
> 
> Another pretty big thing is that Sasuke still doesn't know the truth about the Uchiha Massacre, which will also differ from canon in this fic.

The Land of Cold borders Earth Country and is what shinobi south of the Yuki border have named the land to the north.

The people that inhabit that cold and treacherous land, though—Sasuke’s people by way of blood; his mother’s blood—call it the North.

The true North.

Sasuke has crossed the Yuki border three times in his life; three times more than most people, shinobi and civilian alike, ever will.

Southerners are not welcome in the North. Not by the land and not by the people.

But Sasuke is no mere Southerner. He is the second son of Mikoto, a warrior princess of the North and favoured daughter of the Snow Queen Arslan, first of her name. Itachi was Fugaku’s son, a scion of the Uchiha Clan, forced to shoulder that line’s long and noble traditions as the firstborn, as the one who would be the next Clan Head and guide their family back into riches and honour—to regain the power and respect their good name once demanded.

Sasuke…Sasuke was the spare. The insurance child Fugaku needed in the unlikely event that tragedy should befall his oldest son. Sasuke was born as the spare, and to host the eyes that would one day save Itachi from blindness, as Izuna had done for Madara. As one of Fugaku’s little brothers were meant to aid him when his sight deteriorated far enough. When his strength and power fell into question.

Itachi was for Fugaku and for the clan; Mikoto had no say in Itachi’s upbringing, Sasuke knows. Had been granted no power in how he was raised—Clan rules, Clan laws, Clan traditions—beyond what little time she had managed to steal with her own son when Fugaku wasn’t there to observe.

Even before Sasuke was born, that time had been precious and rare, because Mikoto was as fierce as she was beautiful, a wolf in sheep’s clothing from the North, and she was granted an army of nannies to raise Itachi lest she taint the child with her uncivilised Northern ways. Because that was how the Clan looked at the North, and so it was how they looked at her.

Truly, Mikoto had been Fugaku’s one moment of weakness, and even the great and honourable Uchiha Fugaku had succumbed to the stupidity of a man thinking with his dick when he first laid eyes on Mikoto of the North.

Theirs was not a love story, though. They had met on the battlefield, an insurgence north of the Yuki border where Konoha had come to the aid of Gold Town because Iwagakure couldn’t be bothered, and the promise of chakra-infused gemstones as payment had been more than enough incentive for Konoha to get involved.

Sasuke does not have all the details of what happened in Gold Town, because it had been his mother’s great shame, and six-year-old Sasuke had not understood what that meant beyond Mother and Father being on the opposite sides of a battlefield where Father had won and Mother had lost.

As a grown man having fought through two wars and countless battles, Sasuke knows that to the victor goes the spoils and it was just _such_ a coincidence, wasn’t it, that Itachi just _happened_ to be born some nine months after the battle of Gold Town. And Sasuke is no idiot. He can read between the lines just fine even without all the details.

In his more melancholy moments, Sasuke wonders if Fugaku even gave Mikoto a choice, if there is even a chance that she willingly left the North to go with him, or if Fugaku simply saw her and decided she was beautiful and powerful and that she would be his. The perfect wife to bear his perfect son.

The Sasuke that loved his mother more than anything hopes she was happy, whatever the truth. The Sasuke that remembers the gruelling hits and cruel words of his father, the cuts and bruises Mikoto patched up with ice burning in her eyes as she whispered stories of her home and childhood to Sasuke in a calm, even tone, thinks she must have been miserable. A bird in a gilded cage, and Fugaku never did lay a hand on her in anger when Sasuke was such a convenient outlet for his fury, but oh, how Mikoto must have hated him. Must have hated the entirety of the Uchiha Clan with the sole exception of Itachi and Sasuke, whom she had loved with every fibre of her being.

And yes, Itachi was Fagaku’s son, but he was her firstborn, the apple of her eye, and she _loved_ him even if she couldn’t be Itachi’s mother the way she wanted to.

Sasuke, though. Sasuke was _hers_. There was no army of nannies for Sasuke, no need to entrench him into the Uchiha way of life until it was all he knew. The exception, of course, being that he never forget his place in the Clan, and so Mikoto had been allowed to raise him as she saw fit—for the most part.

She got to teach him the history and the ways of _her_ people, the legends of the snow queens of the North and the warrior tribes living hard lives in a harder climate. Most people looked at the North as a barbaric, uncivilised land, but Sasuke knows the truth. Mikoto had made sure of that.

She had brought him there twice in a pilgrimage to meet her people.

Once, when Sasuke was born, so that he could be blessed in the traditional naming ceremony of the North. Mikoto had been denied this right with Itachi, and she’d made such an uproar when Sasuke was born that she had refused to name him and denied all attempts at any other doing so until Fugaku finally relented. And so she was allowed to travel north with the infant on the condition that two Uchiha Clan members would accompany her, and that _Itachi_ would be the one to suffer if Mikoto wasn’t a good little wife and returned to Konoha with Fugaku’s spare in a timely manner.

The threat against her son had been enough to ensure Mikoto’s compliance.

Sasuke does not remember that first trip, obviously. But he knows that his mother’s tribe had sung the song of the Northern goddess, Shizuyo, she who protects all mothers and newborns. Then he had been presented to his grandmother, Arslan. He had been placed upon her knee as she sat on her throne, so that he could be recognised by the matriarch as a member of her tribe and the son of her daughter, a prince and heir to a throne of snow and ice.

Arslan had sprinkled water on Sasuke’s forehead, to wash him clean of any demons or foul spirits that may have tried to inhabit his body before he was named, before he became a person, and then Mikoto had named him _Sasuke_ , and finally he’d been granted his personhood.

The second time his mother brought him north, Sasuke actually remembers. He’d been six years old, and word of Arslan’s passing had reached them even as far south as Konoha. Sasuke will never forget the look of devastation on his mother’s face as she’d heard the news, or the broken-down cry she had choked back to keep her in-laws from witnessing her terrible grief.

Sasuke had reached for her hand, curling his small fingers around hers and said, “It’s okay, Mama. You can cry. It’s okay.” And she had, great heaving sobs that had wrecked her slim frame once they were back in the mansion and she could lock herself away in her bedroom with Sasuke.

Sasuke—small, tiny six-year-old Sasuke—had held her through it.

Even Fugaku had been moved by her sorrow, and so he had allowed her to travel north with Sasuke once more, so that she could put her mother to rest and pay her final respects.

Itachi, of course, was not allowed to make the journey, and was held back in Konoha as collateral.

Sasuke doesn’t remember much from the trip to the North. Mostly the cold and snow, and the loud howling of the biting wind blowing across huge expanses of barren, snow-covered land.

And the people. He remembers the sea of people that had gathered in one of the tribal lands to honour the last of the snow queens: Arslan, first of her name.

It had taken Mikoto three weeks to travel across the Continent with a small child and two Uchiha escorts, and her family, her tribe, had been kind enough to preserve her mother in snow and ice so that Mikoto could be there when they put her to rest.

Sasuke remembers being horrified when he learnt that his grandmother’s body had not been put to rest as soon as possible, that her soul would be tethered to the living world where no soul belonged once the host was dead. It was unnatural, and if his father had been there, Fugaku would have been furious that Sasuke and Mikoto were taking part in something so foul. 

But then, when the funeral finally took place, Mikoto had been allowed to place one golden coin over each of her mother’s eyes, so that Arslan could pay the ferryman to take her across the Sanzu River and into Gokuraku, the Pure Lands. And as she stood back, Mikoto had taken Sasuke’s hand in hers, and together, both holding a torch in the hand that wasn’t clutching each other, they had lit the funeral pyre and watched as Arslan’s body burned and her soul was released from her mortal chains, and Sasuke had been grateful after all.

Grateful that his mother had been allowed to say goodbye to _her_ mother. Grateful that Sasuke had gotten to be a part of it.

It was the last time Mikoto ever saw her homeland. 

The third time Sasuke journeyed across the Yuki border was during the Great War and he will _never_ forget it. Instead of his kin, he travelled north with Shikamaru by his side. A friend now and one of his best, but a tentative ally back then, if even that. Normally, only an idiot would travel to the Land of Cold without an experienced guide to lead them through that deadly land, but Sasuke had been desperate. They all had been. Besides, Madara was pushing parts of his army north, rushing through Iwa in a destructive tsunami and pushing further north all the time—it wouldn’t be long until he crossed the Yuki border and became a problem for the people there as well.

Sasuke had spent precious _days_ trying to convince the Northern tribes to join their forces, had tried his best to impress upon them the fact that even if _they_ didn’t give a damn about the doings of Southern weaklings, Uchiha Madara discriminated against no people. He wanted to conquer all. Peoples of the South or North. It made no difference to him. He would go north once he was done with the South.

In the end, only scouts from south of Gold Town reporting that an army of dead was advancing past the Yuki border and into North Country had convinced the Northern tribes to join the cause.

Sasuke had fought next to his Northern brethren for nine days and nine nights in one of the most gruelling battles of his life, but they had pushed the army back south of the border and they had held the line, and Sasuke had killed so many people, both living and dead, wrought so much destruction in those nine days and nine nights that the Northern warriors had taken to calling him _Hachiman_. God of War.

When he travelled back south to re-join Kakashi at the war front, the Northern tribes had followed.

Sasuke knows, as Kakashi does, that they would not have won the war without the contribution of the Land of Cold.

“You’re going, then?” Kakashi asks when Sasuke silently appears in the window of his office the next day. It’s his preferred mode of entry, because only a fool would try to gain entrance through the front door unannounced, which is guarded by one of Kakashi’s many assistants—fierce and deadly and likely to use lethal force if someone tries to see the Hokage without an appointment. At least the Anbu guards on duty are less likely to kill Sasuke on sight.

“You managed to convince Naruto.”

“Yes,” Sasuke agrees as he makes his way to one of the plush chairs in front of Kakashi’s desk. There didn’t use to be chairs for visitors here, because the Hokage and the Hokage’s office was a busy one, and they’d prefer if people didn’t linger. But Naruto was a frequent visitor of the Tower even when Tsunade was Hokage, and as much as Tsunade had doted on Naruto, Kakashi is even weaker in the face of his blue eyes and sweet, mischievous smile, and so the chairs had unceremoniously arrived one day and Naruto had been very, very pleased. “It wasn’t easy, though. He doesn’t want to leave.” 

Kakashi hums.

“I need you to message Gaara. Send him an official announcement of Naruto’s impending arrival. I need him to do the dog and pony show. This won’t work if people think Naruto is _not_ on his way to Suna. And it needs the official seal of the Hokage’s office.”

Kakashi hums again. “It’d be easy to read as a ploy if Naruto up and decided to make the trip himself,” he agrees. “I’ll have the necessary papers drawn up. Are we including Gaara in this little scheme of yours?”

Sasuke frowns in thought. “I was planning on it initially. Gaara would play along for Naruto’s sake, but I wonder. Might be best to keep him in the dark. I want as few people in the know as possible.”

“I agree.” Kakashi leans back in his chair, and staples his fingers over his mouth in thought. “Naruto will be able to soothe any insult if it comes down to it, but I’ll send Hinata along with the delegation. I’ll have Naruto write Gaara a letter for Hinata to deliver when the ruse is up. The Kazekage will understand.”

“Yeah, ‘cause it’s Naruto,” Sasuke says with a scowl.

Kakashi grins. He looks ridiculous beneath his Hokage hat, Sasuke thinks uncharitably, especially with his face still hidden by the same type of face-cloth he’s worn since he was a child. Sasuke has seen the pictures from his genin days.

“Are you jealous, Sasuke?” Kakashi teases, and _yes_ , gods dammit, Sasuke is jealous, because he’ll probably never be able to compete against Gaara in Naruto’s mind, but Sasuke will never, ever admit to that.

So he says nothing. Throws his feet up on Kakashi’s desk and hopes Kakashi won’t dismember him for it.

Kakashi does quirk a brow, and the index finger of his left hand twitch involuntary, but he makes no move to get out of his seat, so Sasuke figures he’ll let the disrespect slide this time. 

“I’m planning on bringing two, maybe three members of my team for protection. If it was just me and Naruto it’d be one thing, but we’re bringing Shisui. I’m gonna need a medic and someone to protect him if there’s any fighting. I’m gonna need you to talk to Hiashi.”

Kakashi stares at Sasuke. “You’re not seriously thinking of bringing her.”

“She has a unique skill set, and I’m gonna need her with us. She sees things other people don’t. She’s _specialised_ in seeing things other people don’t.”

“Hiashi will never allow it,” Kakashi says. “Assassinations right across the border is one thing. A potential one-way trip to the Land of Cold is another entirely. He won’t let Hanabi go.”

Sasuke shrugs. “I need her,” he repeats simply. “And _you’re_ the Hokage. You decide where your soldiers go. If you want Shisui to be as safe as possible, if you want _Naruto_ to be as safe possible, you’ll make sure I get Hanabi approved for this mission. And it won’t be a one-way trip. I’d never risk Shisui and Naruto like that. You know I wouldn’t.”

Kakashi sighs heavily. “Fucking brat,” he mutters under his breath, but he sounds fond is the thing, and Sasuke scowls again. He never knows how to react when Kakashi gets like this. As if Sasuke is someone he cares for. Someone he actually likes and isn’t simply tolerating. “Fine. I’ll talk to Hiashi. Who else are you bringing. Kei, I imagine. She’s your medic, isn’t she? Shikamaru?”

“Not Shikamaru. He’d be ideal, and if I could, I’d bring him, but I need him here. Need him to figure out what the hell is going on. Who’s behind it all.”

“That means Karin and Neji are staying too.”

Sasuke snorts. “Are you crazy? I couldn’t have brought Karin even if I wanted to. She and Naruto would destroy each other within a week. You know they can’t stand each other.” And Sasuke still isn’t sure what that is about, but Karin and Naruto’s interactions are frigid at best and deadly at worst—had been ever since the war. _Orochimaru’s_ war, that was. They are _never_ to be left alone together for any amount of time for any reason ever. “But yeah, Neji is my second. I need him to keep shit together here. I was thinking Tenten would be a good fit for a mission like this, but if I’m bringing Kei, I’m gonna need a powerhouse to balance it out and that means—”

“Suigetsu,” Kakashi finishes neatly, and it’s a credit to them both that neither of them wince at that. Suigetsu anywhere is a power keg waiting to blow. Sasuke is not entirely sure that he’ll be able to hold him back if something sets him off.

“Yes,” Sasuke says. “And Jugo. He’s from North Country, and we’ll need a guide. I’m gonna need him.”

“That’s four people even without you, Naruto and Shisui,” Kakashi points out sharply. “Are you sure you want to travel with a group that big. You’ll be far from inconspicuous.”

“It’s at least one more than I would have liked, but it can’t be helped. I need Kei there for Shisui, Suigetsu to protect them both, and Jugo as a guide.”

“Hanabi—”

“Hanabi will be the first person to notice if something is wrong,” Sasuke cuts Kakashi off. “If we pick up a shadow or two, she’ll take them out before they even become a problem. And there is no greater human lie detector in all of the Hidden Villages. I need her with us. I’m not backing down on that. Get me Hanabi on that team, Kakashi.”

“Don’t give me orders, brat,” Kakashi barks at him for his cheek, and his tone is low and dangerous enough that Sasuke strategically decides pulling his legs back from the desk is an excellent idea. “You’re a fucking headache, Uchiha. _Why_ are you always such a fucking headache?”

Sasuke opens his mouth to protest that, because surely it’s not _always_ , but Kakashi keeps talking before Sasuke can get a word in.

“Fine. I’ll get you your team. And I’ll draw up the papers for the diplomatic trip to Suna, like I said. It’ll take a couple of days to get everything set in motion. Be ready to leave in three. Make sure Naruto and Shisui are ready to leave by then. I don’t need Naruto to start a diplomatic incident if he goes off on his own. Of all the pieces on the board, the gods know I have no way of predicting how he’ll act. Fucking brats. All of you headaches. What happened to my cute little genin team, huh? You didn’t used to be like this.”

Sasuke smirks. “We were always headaches. You just forgot. And we were never that cute.”

“Maybe,” Kakashi allows, but his eyes are crinkling warmly at the corners now, and Sasuke knows he is smiling underneath his mask. “You were a little cute, though,” he insists. “ _All_ of you,” he emphasises, and that’s a kindness that Sasuke doesn’t deserve.

Because _yes_ , Sakura and Naruto were as cute then as they are beautiful now, but Sasuke was a sullen, depressed mess after the massacre, and only Naruto, and sometimes Kakashi, had managed to get even a semblance of emotion out of him that wasn’t rage or indifference.

He was not cute. He was a brat, like Kakashi said. And then he was a monster.

(And Sasuke has done many a great and horrible thing in his quest for power and revenge, but none so bad as his sins against Naruto—first at the Valley of the End, and then when Sasuke’s mistake had led to Orochimaru kidnapping Naruto; Sasuke has never felt the kind of rage as when he found out what Orochimaru had done, and Orochimaru could never have predicted that taking Naruto would lead him to his downfall. That _Sasuke_ , his best and brightest soldier, would be the cause of it.)

“All of you,” Kakashi says again, quietly, and the _even you, Sasuke_ goes unspoken because no one has ever been able to read Sasuke quite like Hatake Kakashi.

Sasuke bows his head, so Kakashi can’t see the wet sheen of his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, and both Kakashi and the Anbu in the room are generous enough not to mention the rough croak of his voice. 

Minutes go by, but they sit in shared, comfortable silence until Kakashi’s assistant comes barging through the door, demanding to know why the hell the Hokage hasn’t gotten his ass moving for his eleven o’clock yet, and finally they stand from their seats.

“Kakashi,” Sasuke speaks up as Kakashi allows his assistant to herd him out the door.

“Hm?”

“Thank you,” he grits out, because his mother taught him to express his gratitude when people deserved it, dammit, and the way Kakashi’s expression softens at him will stay with Sasuke until the day he dies.

“Brat,” is all Kakashi says, and then he’s gone, the two Anbu on guard following him out the door until Sasuke is left in an empty room and his screaming thoughts.

**

Sasuke comes home to find his kitchen temporarily taken over by a bunch of five-year-olds and Naruto no where in sight. Sasuke is at once suspicious, because much like himself, Shisui should never be left unaccompanied with anything that has to do with cooking, and Sasuke can see the evidence of what looks like pancake batter in plain sight.

He grabs at Shisui’s waist as his kid runs past him and throws him up over one shoulder, suppressing a smile when Shisui bursts into giggles and the other kids stare with wide, gleeful eyes.

“Oi! What’s going on here then, hm? Where’s your chichiue?”

“Daddy!” Shisui squeals. “Let me down,” he demands, and makes absolutely no move for Sasuke to release him, so Sasuke grins and swings him from one shoulder to the other, laughing when Shisui’s friends actually gasp in awe at the move.

“You know you are not allowed to use the kitchen alone,” Sasuke reminds him. “Where’s your chichiue?” he asks again.

“Chichiue is having lunch at Aunt Ino’s place with Aunt Sakura and Uncle Sai. Aunt Sakura said that Uncle Sai is having a crisis because his girlfriend wants him to move in with her but Uncle Sai is afraid of committen and did a runner and now he needs Chichiue’s help because Chichiue is really good at helping people!”

“Commitment, kiddo, not committen,” Sasuke corrects absently, vaguely horrified that Sai apparently has a girlfriend and one who actually wants to cohabit with him. “So who is watching you lot then? No way your chichiue left you here on your own.”

“Iruka-sensei is!” Shisui says cheerfully.

Sasuke finally slings Shisui off his shoulder and puts him back on the floor with the other kids. He surveys them all sternly. “And just where is Iruka-sensei?” he asks pointedly, casting obvious glances around the room for their wayward babysitter.

The seven kids in front of him instantly take on the guilty air of pranksters caught up in their mischief.

“Shisui,” Sasuke says warningly.

“We’re sorry Shisui’s daddy!” one little girl bursts out.

“We didn’t mean to. It was an accident!” another, identical looking girl chimes in, and around them, the other five kids are nodding their heads fiercely in agreement.

Sasuke heaves a weary sigh, worried at what the kids might have gotten up to. He has to keep himself back from demanding answers as if they were unruly perps and not the cute little kiddos in front of him. He counts to five inside his head before crouching down before the twin girls, offering them a small smile. “It’s okay, girls. Just tell me what happened,” he says, forcing his voice into some semblance of gentle, and instantly seven voices try explaining the events at once.

From what Sasuke can gather, Naruto had brought Shisui to Iruka’s place in Iwa Town, the district next to Sand Land. He’d already been watching his neighbour’s twin girls, Hiromi and Harumi, and had assured Naruto that it’d be no problem at all to watch Shisui as well. Shisui, apparently, is well-acquainted with the twins.

Hiromi and Harumi, as it turns out, are refugees from Iwagakure. Their family is descendant from shinobi, but that rare breed who have not upheld any of the shinobi traditions. Which basically boils down to Hiromi and Harumi having a kekkei genkai they have no idea how to control. Their bloodline limit, Sasuke learns, allows them to affect the parts of the human brain that makes a person fall asleep, except they have no control over it yet. If he were to guess, Sasuke would bet their powers react mostly to their emotions, and so the more the twins got excited, the more tired Iruka had become until he’d finally fallen asleep on his couch.

“We even threw a blanket over him so he wouldn’t be cold, Daddy!”

Sasuke sighs again. He’s going to have to send someone over to Iruka’s place to make sure he’s all right.

“Okay,” he says. “That explains where Iruka-sensei is, but not how the seven of you ended up in my kitchen.”

Shisui shuffles his feet sheepishly. “’m not s’posed to be alone without adult supervision,” he says in the exact same tone that Naruto does when he reminds Shisui of this, and it makes Sasuke struggle to suppress a grin to hear it. “And Chichiue is busy with Uncle Sai, and Hiromi and Harumi’s parents are working their stall at the marked, so we decided to go home because Chichiue says that home will always be safe.”

“And the other kiddos?” Sasuke asks, looking at Shisui’s little friends. Another girl, one of the kids who’d gasped in delight when Sasuke had swung Shisui on his shoulders earlier, meeps in fright when Sasuke meets her eyes.

“It’s a long way home from Iwa Town, Daddy. We met friends along the way!” Shisui exclaims, and it’s such a Naruto answer for something that both explains and _doesn’t_ explain how seven little kids came to be in his kitchen, that Sasuke can’t help but laugh.

“All right, kiddo,” he says. “Keep your secrets. Did you at least wear your goggles? You know you're not supposed to go outside without them." Sasuke waits until Shisui gives him a dutiful nod, before he continues. "Good boy. Now clean up this mess before Chichiue comes back, or _I’ll_ be the one in trouble.” He pauses. “And by the gods, Shisui, if I catch you trying to work the stove top without adult supervision again, I _will_ tell your chichiue.”

The look of horrified betrayal on Shisui’s face is absolutely priceless.

**

Sasuke is writing up the various supply forms he’s going to need for this mission, while simultaneously reading through three different suggestions for travel routes Shikamaru had provided for him when Naruto returns home. He looks up to see his husband leaning against the door jamb to his office, wearing an intricate black and orange kimono he’s fairly certain only Naruto could manage to pull off. Sasuke despairs of the way it makes Naruto’s blue eyes shine even brighter than usual.

“You’re looking fancy,” he says. “I take it lunch was more business than pleasure then. Did you manage to solve Sai’s crisis?”

Naruto hums gently. He straightens from the door and steps into Sasuke’s office proper. He makes his way to Sasuke’s desk, jumps up to sit on the one spot of surface that isn’t covered with documents and starts swinging his legs back and forth as if he is four and not twenty-four.

Sasuke holds back a sigh and doesn’t bother to tell him to get off or point out that this is _Sasuke’s_ desk, thank you very much, because most of the time, what is Naruto’s is Naruto’s and what is Sasuke’s is also Naruto’s.

As if able to hear what he is thinking, Naruto grins and says, “I bought this desk.”

“Yeah, for _me_ ,” Sasuke snaps, but he’s only half-annoyed, and Naruto must know, because he reaches out and tugs at the length of hair spilling over Sasuke’s left shoulder; Sasuke is wearing it in the style of his Uchiha clansmen today, hair at his temples braided back in triplicate, into a joint, thicker, three-stranded infinity braid at the back, while the rest of his long hair hangs free. It had fallen out of practice during Madara’s time, but the Uchihas’ traditionally long hair had been well-suited to the intricate braiding style of Otsutsuki Indra once he’d taken on the name of Uchiha. Sasuke had discovered the braiding manuals in a hidden compartment in Fugaku’s desk in his old office only a couple of weeks ago. It had been hidden away with a few other scrolls Fugaku had clearly disapproved of, but Sasuke found he quite liked the look of the braids, and as a fuck you to his old man had decided to read the manuals front to back until he could complete the braids with little to no issue. This is the first time he’s wearing one of them.

“I like your hair like this,” Naruto says quietly. “Makes you look fierce. Handsome. If the girls had seen you they’d all be swooning right now.”

“I don’t want the girls to be swooning over me,” Sasuke says, but if it means that _Naruto_ likes it, if Naruto thinks Sasuke looks _handsome_ like this, then Sasuke is going to have to wear his hair in this style for the rest of his gods-damned life. Fuck it all.

Naruto smiles at him, reaches out to tug at his hair again, playfully, and Sasuke doesn’t even feel it, but he closes his hand around Naruto’s anyway, carefully extracting his hair from those clever fingers. “You’re avoiding my question,” Sasuke accuses.

Naruto sighs. He turns his face away from Sasuke’s searching gaze, looking out the large windows facing out into the gardens instead. Another smile steals across his lips as he catches sight of where Shisui and his friends are play-acting ninjas.

“Did we acquire a circus while I wasn’t looking?” Naruto asks wryly, but he’s grinning now. He laughs outright when one of the boys Shisui had brought home does an abysmal handstand and falls flat on his face. The boy is up and running a second later, the happy squeals of the kids reaching them inside even with the windows closed.

“Naruto,” Sasuke says firmly. “You’re avoiding my question.” And he is, because Naruto is a sharer and a talker. To not relate the minute details of his lunch by going over _word for word_ what each of the participants had said just because he thinks Sasuke might care (he won’t), because he doesn’t want Sasuke to feel left out when Naruto does things with their friends without him (Sasuke doesn’t but he appreciates the thought), is such a red flag that Sasuke is immediately aware that something is wrong. “Naruto,” he says again. “Tell me.”

“Sai wasn’t having a crisis. It was just a codeword,” Naruto admits finally.

“A codeword,” Sasuke repeats, unimpressed. “And why would he be needing a codeword for a lunch with you, Sakura, and Ino?”

Naruto shrugs delicately, affecting an air of casual indifference that Sasuke doesn’t buy for even a second. “No particular reason. Just some undercover work he was doing. Nothing special.”

Sasuke stares. “Gods dammit, Naruto. Have you been running an unsanctioned op behind my back? Kakashi is gonna kill you!” Or rather, Kakashi is going to kill Sasuke for not picking up on the foolishness that Naruto has been doing right underneath his nose. _Dammit_. 

“Nothing so severe. Just a little intelligence gathering,” Naruto claims, but he’s avoiding looking at Sasuke’s eyes again, which means he may as well have _LIAR! s_ tamped across his forehead for all the good it does him, which worries Sasuke even more. Naruto is a fantastic liar. He didn’t used to be, too honest and too genuine to even think of a falsehood that anyone would believe, but the years of war and fighting changed them all. His road to become a politician has also imparted on him the lesson of keeping his thoughts and opinions private. As Sasuke has experienced so many time since they first married, Naruto is a veritable vault when he has information he doesn’t want anyone else to know; the fact that he is slipping now means that something is very, very wrong.

Sasuke groans in frustration. Why is his husband like this? “Naruto, sweetheart,” he says, and just barely keeps from wincing at the endearment he let slip. He hopes Naruto is too busy avoiding this confrontation to notice. “You cannot keep this from me. How am I supposed to keep you safe if you keep changing tracks by yourself and I don’t even realise you’re doing it? Tell me what’s going on.”

“Do you see the twin girls next to Shisui?” Naruto asks, a non sequitur. 

Sasuke blinks at the question, but dutifully looks out the window towards where Naruto is gesturing at the three kids huddled together. 

“I met them today. They accidentally put Iruka to sleep with their kekkei genkai, apparently. Don’t worry,” Sasuke says when Naruto’s eyes snap back to look at him at that. “I had Moegi check up on him earlier. He’s perfectly fine. Just a little extra fatigued. It’ll pass in a couple of hours.”

But Sasuke’s words do nothing to soothe Naruto’s worry. If anything, he looks even more anxious. “I see,” he says. He bites at his lower lip, casting a brief glance back to the twins before turning to face Sasuke again. He takes a breath, to gather his thoughts in order, Sasuke thinks, and then he starts speaking.

About four months ago, Naruto tells him, the Senate passed a bill that granted tax exemptions to low-income households with children, regardless if they were civilians or shinobi. The use of the word ‘households’ instead of ‘families’ is apparently very significant, because it means that people with no kids were also eligible for the tax exemption, provided they lived in a _household_ with kids. For war refugees especially, people who have lost their entire families, the bill has become a lifeline.

“And it’s _working_ , Sasuke,” Naruto enthuses, so earnest and lovely that Sasuke can do nothing but stare. “I was talking to a couple from down in Little Oto the other day, and in just a few weeks they’ll be able to move out of the apartment of the family they’ve been living with, to get their own place and actually pay taxes because the exemption helped them get to a place where they are able to do that now. In just four months, Sasuke! Four! Why shouldn’t Konoha pick up the bill for that? We have the money, the economy, and that couple I was talking about is going to become contributing members of our society. They’re already well on their way.”

So the bill is working, but it is taking a heavy toll on the Konoha coffers, Naruto acknowledges. Especially with their record-high population and the immigrants that are still pouring in by the day. Naruto, who had proposed the bill, who had worked on it with his colleagues in the Centuriate Assembly before putting it to the Senate, absolutely believes that the pros outweighs the cons. Cons that, apparently, now include _families_ of a certain income paying more taxes to make up the difference. This, Sasuke learns, has not gone over well with the families in question.

“They have more than enough money to compensate, Sasuke, but they’re so fucking pissed off. Like we’re robbing them blind when most of them could afford to pay five times the amount we raised it to, and _still_ live more than comfortably. And it’s only temporarily. I don’t even know why—”

Kakashi, as Hokage, paid an even higher income tax in a show of good faith and camaraderie. Naruto and Sasuke’s taxes were higher than even Kakashi’s, which Sasuke already knows because Naruto had brought it up with him months ago, but was something that Sasuke rarely considered because like Naruto said, he has more than enough to live comfortably for the rest of his life—and Shisui after him.

And besides, Sasuke is likely to give up the entirety of the Uchiha fortune if Naruto only asks it of him.

“What does this have to do with Sai going undercover?” Sasuke cuts in before Naruto can go on another tangent.

The short answer is _very little_. The long answer is _everything, possibly._

It turns out that about a month ago, Sakura had noticed a sudden influx of patients at the hospital with symptoms of fatigue. It wasn’t exactly a bizarre epidemic of narcolepsy, but a significant amount of people _were_ reporting having fallen asleep in the middle of the day with no memory of even closing their eyes. Curious, but nothing that warranted heavy investigation when no one was hurt and the side effects seemed limited to some mild confusion and fatigue that passed on its own in just a few hours.

Sakura had mentioned it to Naruto anyway.

Naruto, who’s always been good at fitting together pieces that really don’t seem as if they go together in the first place, was reminded of the Obi twins, Hiromi and Harumi.

The Obi family is Iruka’s next-door neighbours. He’s friendly with them, which of course means that _Naruto_ is friendly with them; Shisui has been playing with the girls for over two months now, Naruto tells Sasuke.

With the exception of the twins, the family consists of Iwa parents, a boy who has just graduated the Ninja Academy and become a genin, and a woman just a few years younger than Sasuke and Naruto. Hitomi has been Sai’s undercover mission.

“Their kekkei genkai is matriarchal. It only follows the female line,” Naruto explains. “I’ve seen Obi-san use it before, and she has zero control over it, much like the twins. There is absolutely no way she was faking, either, and besides it looks as if it’s weaker in her. The other one, though. Hitomi. She clearly knows what she’s doing. I’ve seen her put her sisters to sleep before. If someone is going around making people deliberately fall asleep, to the point where they don’t even remember it happening, she’s the one doing it if not actually responsible.”

Sasuke considers this. “You think she’s working for someone?”

“I thinks it’s very likely.” Naruto sighs, reaching out to fiddle with a lock of Sasuke’s hair again. Sasuke doesn’t think he’s even aware he’s doing it. “She’s a sweet girl, really,” Naruto goes on. “Hardworking, diligent. She works as a shop assistant at the Yamanaka shop, you know. Ino says she knows her flowers.”

Which is no small compliment, Sasuke knows. Ino might belong to the KPD now, but she’s serious about her flowers and her family’s legacy.

“All right,” Sasuke says, thinking it over. “I’ll bite. Say this Hitomi person really is going around putting people to sleep, let’s even say she’s doing it on the behest of someone else. To what purpose? Nothing has been reported missing or stolen, right? And none of the people—let’s just call them victims for now—have been seriously harmed, and they all recover fairly quickly. What the hell do they get out of putting people to sleep?”

Naruto shakes his head, frustrated. “I don’t know, Sasuke. I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’m _positive_ that something is going on. Sai followed her to a restaurant the other day. One of the expensive ones in Sand Land. He says she sat at the bar for twenty minutes. Ordered a drink she didn’t even so much as sip from, and then she just up and left.”

“People are allowed to go to bars, Naruto,” Sasuke reminds him. “Though I’ll admit ordering a drink for the heck of it does seem a little weird. Maybe she just changed her mind.”

“She shouldn’t have been there at all,” Naruto says insistently. “She doesn’t have the kind of money where she can go day drinking on a random Tuesday, _especially_ not in a high-end restaurant in the middle of Sand Land. Sai followed her out but he’s smart; he left an ink clone behind for reconnaissance.”

“And?”

“ _And_ ,” Naruto emphasise, “who should show up but the leader of the Nationalist party himself? Shimura Dai.”

“Shimura? Danzo’s son, is he?”

“Nephew,” Naruto corrects. “His brother’s son. Though Danzo did raise him after he was orphaned in the Kyuubi attack. Which is unfortunate; they’re very alike.”

Sasuke snorts derisively. “And I imagine Shimura Dai had no idea that his uncle was hording Uchiha eyes like gods-damned candy.”

“He would have been Itachi’s age when the massacre happened,” Naruto says gently. “And he was cleared of all suspicions when Danzo’s crimes came to light. He insists he had no part in his uncle’s wrongdoings.”

“And you believe that?”

“Not even a little bit. But Danzo is dead and the Council is not about to re-open an investigation into the massacre when they already have their perfect scapegoat. I’m sorry, Sasuke. I tried pushing for it, I know you think there’s a chance Itachi might be innocent, but before the Council goes through a generational shift, they’re not going to look into it without further evidence.”

Sasuke grits his teeth at that. For the whole of a decade, Sasuke had believed that his brother was the sole perpetrator of the Uchiha Massacre. But there were some things that didn’t quite add up. Little things that eight-year-old Sasuke had never thought to consider, but that the eighteen-year-old him had found very, very interesting. And then the Great War happened, and Sasuke still isn’t sure if it was hubris, an overinflated sense of self importance, or the _ten_ Sharingan eyes he had embedded in his right arm and the one in his right eye, or maybe even a combination of all three, but Danzo had gone up against Madara early on and expected to win.

The old man had held out for longer than anyone else who went up against Madara in single combat, and that is the lone thing that Sasuke will respect him for. Otherwise, Danzo is the bastard that had ordered Sasuke’s brother to kill his own clansmen for reasons Sasuke still doesn’t know, and then Danzo had conspired with Orochimaru to get his right arm. 

(Sasuke hopes the both of them drowned in the Sanzu River on their way to the afterlife, because surely, the ferryman would not have carried either of them across the river for all the gold in the world. Neither of them deserved a place in the Pure Lands.)

Once Konoha shinobi had collected Danzo’s body from the battlefield, it was obvious that he’d had less than savoury dealings relating to the Uchiha Clan, and Tsunade, still the Godaime Hokage at the time, had ordered an investigation into Danzo’s belongings. The crimes that were revealed from what little paper trail Danzo had left behind were staggering. But worst of them were Root, and Itachi’s order to massacre his own clan.

Sasuke had been beyond incensed when he found out. He’d come close to wiping out one of Madara’s battalions by himself as he worked out his fury and aggression. Days later, Itachi had appeared at his side without so much as a by your leave. It was the first time Sasuke had seen him in _years_ , and for months while the war raged on, Itachi fought against Madara at Sasuke’s side. 

Never once did he reveal why Danzo had ordered him to kill the Clan, why Itachi had gone through with the order in the first place, or why he’d left Sasuke alive.

Sasuke demanded answers, again and again, but Itachi’s mouth remained stubbornly shut, a lethal and silent companion as Sasuke destroyed troop after troop of Madara’s army of the un-dead.

Before the end, when Madara was still clinging to his unnatural life and raising the dead one corpse at a time, both their Mangekyous were shot to hell. They’d overpowered them in the months of fighting, and they were both going blind.

Itachi insisted that Sasuke take his eyes, and that more than anything was enough to convince Sasuke that something more than simply the massacre had happened ten years ago. No Sharingan user would so easily surrender their eyes. Not even someone bred for that very purpose.

“I’m not taking your fucking eyes, for gods’ sake, don’t be a fucking idiot.”

“Sure you are. You’re going blind,” Itachi had countered, conveniently ignoring his own imminent blindness. And because they’re _brothers_ , dammit, it had become a never-ending argument until Kakashi had sent for Sakura because _someone_ would have to sacrifice their eyes for the other if Kakashi wanted to retain at least _one_ of his best soldiers, and then Naruto decided to defy Kakashi’s orders to stay behind in Konoha and escort Sakura to the front lines because she was still dealing with the severed leg she’d suffered in a battle weeks earlier and _hey, everyone, here’s an idea. Why don’t they just switch eyes with each other and be done with it?_

And of course Naruto would be the one to come up with it, thinking outside the box as usual—and Sasuke is fairly certain that most days Naruto doesn’t even have a box, that he got rid of it ages ago because it was littered with unnecessary clutter, and wild, unprecedented ideas must be so much easier to come up with when you’re following _no rules whatsoever._

So Sakura performed the double surgery, because there was no reason why it shouldn’t work, medically speaking—and it made all the sense in the world that it _did_ work and it turned out that generations of Uchihas have been unnecessarily sacrificing their eyes to family members because that’s the kind of Clan history they have.

Having successfully completed the transplants, it didn’t take long for Itachi and Sasuke to unlock their Eternal Mangekyou, and with Naruto having joined them on the front lines, Madara was defeated in just another couple of months.

Itachi disappeared sometime in the midst of the celebration. He was still a missing nin, still the murderer of the Uchiha Clan and a known member of Madara’s Akatsuki; he was wanted in all of the elemental countries.

Sasuke hasn’t seen him since, the bastard. He hates that he misses him.

“It’s not your fault,” Sasuke tells Naruto now. “Itachi is probably the only person left alive that really knows what happened. I’ll never learn the truth unless he decides to crawl out from wherever the hell he’s hidden himself away.” Not that Sasuke is bitter. At all. “Anyway, you were talking about Shimura Dai. Why are you excited about him showing up at an expensive restaurant? If he’s the heir to the Shimura Clan, _he_ certainly can afford to go day drinking.”

“That’s just it!” Naruto says excitedly. “He did sit at the bar, and he did order a drink. Hitomi’s drink. The exact one. Sai says the ink clone saw the bartender give him the drink Hitomi ordered and then left untouched. Now, why, if you’re a bartender in a fancy up-scale restaurant, would you risk giving a customer a drink that another customer had ordered first? Regardless if she touched it or not? Even ignoring the hygienics of it, it’s immediate grounds for dismissal.”

“The bartender is in on it,” Sasuke says slowly. He’s a shinobi; too many wrongs usually make a right. An ugly right. “Okay, I agree. That’s too much of a coincidence. They must be communicating via the drinks somehow.”

Naruto nods. “That’s what I was thinking, I just don’t know how yet. Or _what_ they’re communicating. But I know Dai, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got a pretty good read on Hitomi. He’s up to something, and she’s being coerced into helping is my guess.”

Sasuke hums thoughtfully, narrowing his eyes at Naruto. “But you think it has something to do with the bill?”

“Dai voted against it. Campaigned against it pretty violently, actually.” Naruto shrugs, his slim shoulders moving at the motion. “And he’s been the loudest protester against the raised taxes for high-income families. I have no idea what he’s hoping to get out of this, no idea what he’s even doing, to be truthful with you, but yeah. If something is going down, he’s got motive and means.”

Fuck. This is exactly the kind of thing Sasuke doesn’t need right now. Not when someone is out to kill Naruto. “You think he’s got something to do with the threat to your life?”

Naruto tilts his head to the side, considering it. “Maybe,” he allows. But then he straightens, his fingers pulling back from where they’ve been playing with Sasuke’s hair this whole time. He starts to fiddle with the ring on his left hand instead. He does that sometimes, Sasuke knows, when he’s deep in thought, and Sasuke burns with something hot and possessive every time he sees it, because Sasuke gave him that ring.

_Mine_ , something snarls ferociously in his mind, and Sasuke has to work to temper that part of him. _Not yet_ , he soothes it. Naruto isn’t ready yet.

“No, actually. I take it back,” Naruto says. “I don’t doubt that Dai is capable of murder, though he’s probably more likely to order a hit than do the deed himself, but he’s my biggest political rival. He’s a known opposer of my political beliefs and it’s no secret that he hates my guts. Someone from inside Konoha being out to kill me is beneficial to him, because it’s likely to get me out of the Village, which it will in this case,” he says sourly, aiming a quick pout at Sasuke, just to let him know how unhappy he still is about it. “And if I died, even better for him—but only in the long run and only if he’s innocent. He’d be one of the first suspects, and he has to know that Kakashi would tear his life apart if he thought there was even the smallest of chance that Dai had something to do with it.” Naruto shakes his head, eyes meeting Sasuke’s. “He’s up to something nefarious, I’m sure of it, but I don’t think he’s dumb enough to kill me, the current political climate being what it is. He’s smarter than that.” 

“Oh, so it’s the current political climate that stays his hand. How reassuring,” Sasuke snarks, and Naruto laughs because threats against his life has become so commonplace he doesn’t quite take it seriously anymore.

That’s what Jugo and Shikamaru had told him after that first meeting at the Clubhouse. _Naruto is notified each time there’s a threat against him, and there are so many he’s become numb to them, because we do our gods-damned jobs and make sure they never become more than just threats. He doesn’t see the danger in them anymore. Make sure he takes it seriously, Colonel._

He may not act it, but Sasuke knows that Naruto is aware of the danger this time. Of how serious everyone is treating the threat against his life, because he knows Sasuke would not have forced him to leave Konoha for anything short of immediate danger.

“You’ll tell Shikamaru about Dai? Sai is going to need a new handler if I’m not around.”

Sasuke holds back a groan, deciding not to get into that beyond promising that yes, he’ll tell Shikamaru, and yes, they’ll make Sai’s undercover mission a proper, sanctioned one, _Naruto, for gods’ sake._

We’re really leaving then?” Naruto asks, picking up a Class 5 ammunition supply form in one hand and looking over it critically. He grabs a pen in his other hand and adds in a large order for poison senbon needles. Sasuke politely pretends not to notice.

“Yes. We’re just waiting for all the paperwork to go through, but we’re leaving in three days. A diplomatic trip to Sunagakure will be the ruse.”

“You’re not telling Gaara, then?” Naruto asks knowingly. He looks at Sasuke from beneath his lashes, and Sasuke very carefully forces himself not to react when Naruto says, “I’ll have to write him a letter, an apology for bringing him into this mess. I’m sure the convoy will bring it along with them.”

“Kakashi and I were counting on it,” Sasuke says evenly, and isn’t quite sure what to make of the pleased, little smile that teases at Naruto’s mouth.

“Who will be our medic? I want someone competent who can handle it if Shisui seizes, or we might as well just stay put. I’m not going if it means he’ll have subpar treatment.”

“Kei will be the medic,” Sasuke soothes. “She’s more than capable to deal with Shisui’s epilepsy. You know that. She'll make sure he doesn't miss any of his meds, and that he stays on his diet.”

“I guess that’s acceptable,” Naruto says grudgingly, looking unhappy. It is a huge concession, because he’s ever really only trusted Sakura with Shisui’s health, and Tsunade before she died. Kei isn’t specialised in pediatrics, like one of Sakura’s many areas of expertise, but she is trained under Sakura, and she had been part of Shisui’s medical team the last time he had been hospitalised.

“Naruto. Hey.” Sasuke stands from his chair, pulls Naruto to his feet as well and then grabs Naruto’s face between his hands, holding him until Naruto deigns to look at him. “Hey,” he says again. “Shisui has made that trip once before. He’ll do it again, okay? He’ll be fine. I promise.”

“You can’t promise that, Sasuke. You weren’t here the last time. You said he made it once before, but Shisui was half dead when Jugo brought him here, and Tsunade spent _weeks_ stabilising him. He would have died without her.”

Naruto isn’t trying to hurt him, Sasuke knows, but the words cut deep anyway, and Sasuke lets his hands fall away as he takes a step back, because Naruto is right. Sasuke hadn’t been here when his son first arrived in Konoha. He hadn’t even known about it.

This is the truth about Shisui:

He was conceived during Sasuke’s time north of Gold Town, when he was trying to convince the Northern tribes to join the fight against Madara. Sasuke had slept with a couple of men and several women even before the Battle of the Yuki Border, and he hadn't actually remembered the names of any of them.

Okimoto Kin, though, had had little care as to whether she had left an impression or not. She'd had no plans to birth a child in war times, but children are so very precious in the North, and this was the great-grandchild of Arslan, the last of the snow queens. Kin, like most of her tribes women, was a warrior and had never intended to become a mother. Once the child was born, weeks ahead of time, she had done her best by him, placing him in the care of members of Arslan's tribe with the promise that they would get word to his father, Uchiha Sasuke, the daughter-son of Arslan. Then, she had travelled south to join in the war effort. Sasuke has no idea if she survived the war or if she's even alive today.

Wherever she is, Sasuke owes her a debt that can never be repaid; she had given him his son, and Shisui has been the greatest blessing in his life.

And even as a newborn, Shisui so resembled Sasuke that there was no question as to his parentage. Eleven years had passed since the last time he’d been to North Country with Mikoto, but Arslan's tribe had still remembered him, and family takes care of family in the North, even if there was none left alive that shared his blood. They had made sure to find a way to get word of his newborn son to Sasuke.

‘The way’ ended up being Jugo, who was making his way south from further up country at the time. He’d been on his way to join Sasuke and Suigetsu and the rest of the Northern tribes fighting at the war front. When he’d stopped at the village of Arslan’s tribe for supplies, he’d taken one look at the sickly babe and decided that getting the child to Konoha would be his way of repaying what Sasuke had done to protect his homeland.

Having known Sasuke since they were untested teens in Orochimaru’s Hidden Village, and knowing that Sasuke was currently stuck on the front lines, Jugo had decided to deliver the boy to the one person he knew Sasuke would trust to take care of something as precious as his son: Naruto.

By the time Jugo managed to get through a war-ravaged Land of Earth and into the Land of Fire and Konoha beyond that, the baby was three months old and still nameless.

Naruto is the one who named him; after Sasuke’s favourite cousin, because even after all these years and everything Sasuke had done to him, Naruto still remembered this little fact.

And so Shisui became Naruto’s charge while the war raged on, and it was during this time that he was diagnosed with epilepsy, a diagnosis that had been confirmed by Jugo's account that the baby had gone through several minor seizures during their journey. He’d likely been born with it, but his condition had been exacerbated by being born premature. The rough journey from North Country to Konoha hadn't helped.

Naruto was the one who took care of him, who stayed with Shisui in the hospital and made sure he had the very best care there was; even before Sasuke knew he had a son, Naruto was his chichiue.

When he finally received Naruto’s letter telling him of the news—and communications to the front lines had been cut off for weeks by then—Sasuke cried, and Itachi and Kakashi both slapped him on the back in heartfelt congratulations, and for a precious, lone, single moment in the middle of war and death and misery, people had been celebrating the happy tidings of a new _life._

The only time Naruto has been apart from Shisui since Jugo placed the baby into his arms, had been the two months he’d spent on the front lines when Kakashi had sent for Sakura.

“I’m sorry, Sasuke. That was cruel of me. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Sasuke shakes his head. He knows. Of course he knows that Naruto wasn’t being deliberately cruel, but there must be something on his face, more honest and raw than Sasuke would like, because Naruto is the one to reach out this time. He steps close, into Sasuke’s space, and lifts a hand to place it on the back of Sasuke’s neck, pushing until Sasuke gives in and bends his head until his forehead rests against Naruto’s.

“I’m sorry,” Naruto says again, the whisper of his breath a cool breeze over Sasuke’s lips. “I didn’t mean to be cruel. It wasn’t your fault, any of it, and I know that. I’m just being an ass because I’m scared. Okay? I came so close to losing him before, and he wasn’t even mine back then, not really, not like now.” Naruto takes in a big, shuddery breath. “I just love him so much. He’s my baby, okay? And if anything were to happen to him, I don’t think I—” He cuts himself off, not even able to finish the sentence.

“I know,” Sasuke whispers. “I know, sweetheart. I’m the same. You and Shisui—” He breaks off, eyes searching Naruto’s, seeing the fear of losing a loved one reflected back at him. “I’ll burn this world to the ground before I let anything happen to you and Shisui. You _have_ to know that. Tell me you know that, Naruto,” he begs, and Naruto is nodding, whispering _of course, Sasuke, I know,_ and at some point, Sasuke’s arms winds themselves around Naruto’s waist and their foreheads are still touching when Shisui comes running into the room, the goggles that protects him from light sensitivity hanging around his neck, and six little kids trailing behind him.

“Daddy! Chichiue! We’re hungry!” he exclaims. “Can we have pancakes, please?”

Naruto pulls away from Sasuke with a wet laugh. “That’s my cue, I guess.”

“At least he said please?” Sasuke offers, dredging up a smirk to cover up how awkward he feels without Naruto in his arms.

“Must be his daddy’s manners,” Naruto says, and the smile he offers Sasuke is so, so gentle. An apology to match his earlier words.

“Yeah. Must be,” Sasuke says, and watches as Naruto herds the gaggle of five-year-olds out of Sasuke’s office and into the kitchen, tiny voices demanding the different types of pancakes they would like to eat.


End file.
